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ENIGMATIC CHARMS
HANDBOOK OF ORIENTAL STUDIES
HANDBUCH DER ORIENTALISTIK
SECTION ONE
THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST
EDITED BY

H. ALTENMÜLLER · B. HROUDA · B.A. LEVINE · R.S. O’FAHEY

K.R. VEENHOF · C.H.M. VERSTEEGH

VOLUME EIGHTY-TWO

ENIGMATIC CHARMS
 ENIGMATIC CHARMS
Medieval Arabic Block Printed Amulets
in American and European Libraries and Museums

BY

KARL R. SCHAEFER

LEIDEN • BOSTON
2006
On the cover: 1978.546.37. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Nelly, Violet and Elie Abemayor,
in Memory of Michael Abemayor, 1978 (1978.546.37) © 2005 The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN 0169-9423
ISBN-10: 90 04 14789 6
ISBN-13: 978 90 04 14789 8

© Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints,
Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written
permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal
use is granted by Brill provided that
the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright
Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910
Danvers MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.

printed in the netherlands

 To the memory
of my parents

Helen Greene Schaefer (1916–2001)

Karl George Schaefer (1912–2004)
 CONTENTS

Preface ............................................................................................................................ ix
Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1
The Historico-religious Context of Arabic Block Printing ............................................ 7
The (Re)discovery of Arabic Block Printing .................................................................. 21
Calligraphy and the Issue of Dating the Arabic Block Prints ........................................ 41

BLOCK PRINTED AMULETS IN EUROPEAN LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS

Key to Transcriptions of Arabic Texts ........................................................................... 55

Ägyptologisches Museum und Papyrussammlung Berlin .............................................. 57
Cambridge University Library, Michaelides Collection ................................................ 67
Cambridge University Library, Taylor-Schechter Geniza Collection ........................... 81
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Ireland ........................................................................ 97
Gutenberg Museum, Mainz, Germany ......................................................................... 103
Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Institut für Papyrologie ........................................... 111
John Rylands Library, University of Manchester .......................................................... 113
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Papyrussammlung ................................................ 115
Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg ................................................. 157
Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge .................................................................... 163

BLOCK PRINTED AMULETS IN AMERICAN LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS

Columbia University Library, Papyrus Collection ......................................................... 169

Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington ............................................................. 177
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Madina Collection of Islamic Art,
A Gift of Camilla Chandler Frost .............................................................................. 181
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Islamic Art, New York, New York ....... 187
Scheide Library, Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library,
Princeton University .................................................................................................. 219

List of Locations and Accession Numbers for Known ”arshes in Europe and
the United States ........................................................................................................ 225
List of Works Consulted ................................................................................................. 235

Index to Qur’anic Chapters (Suras) and Verses (Ayat) Appearing in the Texts of
the Amulets ................................................................................................................ 241
Index .............................................................................................................................. 243

Plates .............................................................................................................................. 245

 PREFACE

What began as a relatively minor task—one only tangentially related to my primary purpose
at the time—has grown into something of some substance, I hope. Much of what I have en-
countered in my study of medieval Arabic block prints has been beyond my modest talents to
analyze and elucidate. The results of this effort, therefore, while going to press with my name
on the title page, owe much to the encouragement, advice and assistance of an entire phalanx
of friends, scholars, and librarians. Especially librarians.
The genesis of this work lies in the suggestion offered to me in 1994 by Patricia H. Marks,
then editor of the Princeton University Library Chronicle, that I compose an article on the unique
example of Arabic block printing held by the William H. Scheide Library at Princeton. In this
regard, I must thank Mr. Scheide, again, for granting me permission to publish his artifact,
as well as William Stoneman, former Librarian of the Scheide Library, and Paul Needham,
current Scheide Librarian, for making the block print available to me for close study. Dr. Don
Skemer, Curator of Manuscripts in Firestone Library’s Department of Rare Books and Spe-
cial Collections provided encouragement and, through his own research on European amulets,
the outlines of a historical context for the present study.
The publication of the Scheide block print resulted in a very attering review and enthu-
siastic encouragement from Dr. Geoffrey J. Roper, late of the Islamic Bibliography Unit at
Cambridge University Library. He urged me to continue my study of Arabic block printing
and to that end made slides of Cambridge’s two collections available to me. Over the inter-
vening years, he has not ceased to provide valuable insight, leads on previously unknown or
recently discovered examples, bibliographic assistance, hospitality, and friendship. Dr. Stefan
C. Reif, Director of the Taylor-Schechter Geniza Research Unit at Cambridge also provided
timely help and advice about how to proceed with reproduction rights for images of that part
of Cambridge’s important collection of Arabic block prints. Dr. Reif, Dr. Ben M. Outhwaite,
and D.J. Hall, Deputy Librarian at Cambridge University Library, also granted permission
to publish the images of the block prints in their collections. Ruth Long and her colleagues
in the Photographic Department there carried out the digital photography with consummate
professionalism.
Because the examples of medieval Arabic block printing are so widely scattered, archived
as they are in more than a dozen university libraries, museums and private collections, the
generous assistance of the librarians and curators I have had the good fortune to meet cannot
be overstated. In addition to those people I have already mentioned, I am deeply indebted to
the librarians and museum archivists who not only facilitated my study of objects known to
reside in their institutions, but allowed me to have virtually unfettered access to their collections
of Arabic materials. This generous degree of freedom enabled me to identify two previously
unknown examples of the craft and to create a more reliable census of the total number of
extant Arabic block prints.
Several institutions in Great Britain and Ireland are in possession of Arabic block printed
amulets and my rst foray into an investigation of a larger grouping of block prints was cen-
tered on these places. At Cambridge University Library, in addition to the people mentioned
x PREFACE

above, I would like to thank Jill Butterworth and G.D. Bye who provided valuable technical
assistance and helpful information. For enabling me to examine the block print at the John
Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, my gratitude goes to Dr. Peter McNiven,
former Head of the John Rylands Research Institute, and his colleagues on the library staff,
particularly Ms. Anne Young, Dr. Dorothy Clayton, Ms. Carol Burrows and Ms. Anne M.
Clarkson. My August 1999 visit to the Chester Beatty Library in Ballsbridge, Dublin was made
most pleasant by its then Director, Dr. Elaine Wright, and her attentive staff. Dr. Wright’s pre-
decessor, Dr. Anna Contadini, is also due my thanks for her provision of a photograph of the
Chester Beatty block print. For permission to publish the Chester Beatty Library’s example of
Arabic block printing, I thank the current director, Dr. Michael Ryan and Ms. Sinéad Ward of
the Rights and Reproductions ofce.
Most recently, long after my return from England, the existence of yet another Arabic block
print was brought to my attention—again by Geoffrey Roper. He put me in contact with its
(re)discoverer, Petra Sijpesteijn, currently at Oxford University, who came across it in the Wren
Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. My thanks to Dr. Sijpesteijn, and to David McKitter-
ick and Joanna Ball, Librarian and Sub-Librarian, respectively, of the Wren Library for their
prompt assistance in obtaining a slide of the piece, for their continued interest in my project,
and for permission to publish the unique example in their collection. My thanks to Jonathan
Smith, also of the Wren Library, for providing a detailed prose description of the block print,
and for allowing me to study it rst-hand.
The second phase of my research led me to continental Europe where another cadre of li-
brarians and curators was instrumental in advancing my project. The important collection held
by the Erzherzog Rainer Papyrussamlung at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB)
was opened to me by its collegial and engaging Leiter, Professor Dr. Hermann Harrauer in
January of 1999. His interest in my project, and his knowledge of what those rare investigators
who preceded me had discovered, have been extremely valuable to me. Dr. Cornelia Römer,
current Director of the Papyrussammlung, has been equally interested in my work and I thank
her for her permission to publish the ÖNB’s important Arabic block print collection here.
In Berlin, I had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of two scholars who made
my visit to the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Charlottenburg, productive and
rewarding. In anticipation of my visit, Dr. Ingeborg Müller had prepared the museum’s one
known block print for my study in very pleasant surroundings. Then, with the cooperation of
Dr. William Brashear, who, sadly, has since passed away, I was allowed to peruse the museum’s
holdings of Arabic manuscript pages, among which I discovered a second, previously unknown
example of block printing. For that marvelous experience, I am deeply indebted to them both.
Mr. Jürgen Liepe undertook the task of making available to me digital images of the two Berlin
block prints. I gratefully acknowledge here his contribution to this study.
A similar degree of access was granted me by Dr. Volkmar Enderlein, Director of the
Museum für Islamische Kunst on Bodenstrasse, Berlin. Although my search of those archives
was not similarly rewarded, I want to thank him and his staff for their willingness to let me have
a look. In Heidelberg, the library of Ruprecht-Karls-Universität had been reported as hold-
ing as many as six Arabic block prints. Prof. Dr. Dieter Hagedorn, at that time Director of the
Bibliothek des Instituts für Papyrologie, and James M.S. Cowey, a member of the library’s staff,
permitted me to spend an afternoon looking through their collection of some three thousand
Arabic manuscript leaves, among which I found another previously unknown block print. Also
 PREFACE xi

in Heidelberg, Professor Dr. Raif Georges Khoury of the Seminar für Sprachen und Kulturen
des Vorderen Orients was kind enough to spend some time providing background on the fate
of Prof. Adolf Grohmann’s unnished work on Arabic palaeography and the artifacts relat-
ing thereto. For permission to publish the Heidelberg block print, I thank Dr. Andrea Jördens,
Director of the Seminar for Papyrology, and Dr. Thomas Kruse. In Holland, Jan Just Witkam,
Head of the Oriental Department, Leiden University Library, was able to provide me with
some very useful information about the block print held by Mr. J.W.Th. Van Meeuwen (now in
the collections of the Gutenberg Museum, Mainz, Germany).
In the United States, this project has been helped along by several librarians and museum
curators. The contributions of my former colleagues at Princeton have been mentioned al-
ready. Additionally, Roger S. Bagnall of Columbia University and Rudolph S. Ellenbogen,
former Curator of Rare Books in Butler Library at Columbia, provided me with access to the
sole block print in their archives. Their assistance is gratefully acknowledged. Jean W. Ashton,
current Director of Rare Books and Special Collections is due my thanks for permission to
publish Columbia’s block print here. Ms. Tara C. Craig, Reference Services Supervisor, as-
sisted in obtaining the image of it.
The Department of Islamic Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City gave
me permission to study their important collection of Arabic block prints on two separate oc-
casions. For this courtesy, and for publication permission, I would like to thank the head of the
department, Dr. Stefano Carboni. Dr. Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, now retired, and Holly Shaffer
also gave me a cordial reception and generous assistance. Saundra Taylor, Curator of Manu-
scripts, and Francis E. Lapka of Public Services in the Lilly Library, University of Indiana,
provided me with the opportunity to study their block print. Lilly Library’s permission to pub-
lish their block print is acknowledged, with my thanks. Alessandro Pezzati, Reference Archivist,
and Charles S. Kline of the Photographic Archives, University of Pennsylvania Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology, helped to establish that the single block print in the collections
of that institution is no longer to be found there.
A small number of Arabic block prints are (or were, until recently) in private collections.
The owners of these examples were, without exception, extremely gracious in allowing me to
examine the pieces they hold. I have already mentioned Mr. William Scheide, whose collection
resides at Princeton. Dr. Ma{an Z. Madina, Professor Emeritus of Columbia University, very
kindly allowed me to study and make slides of his collection. He took the time to read through
my research and to listen to my plan for a catalogue of the known block prints. Dr. Madina’s
two block prints were subsequently (in 2002) acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of
Art. Dr. Linda Komaroff, Curator of Islamic Art and Department Head, Ancient and Islamic
Art at that institution, generously granted permission to publish these two ne examples. The
assistance of her two colleagues, Ms. Megan Knox and Giselle Arteaga-Johnson, is also noted,
with gratitude. Likewise, Mr. J.W.Th. van Meeuwen of the Hague in the Netherlands enthu-
siastically embraced my project and provided me not only with generous access to his block
print, but also a slide and technical reports on the composition of the amulet’s paper. He, too,
has been an enthusiastic and interested supporter of my work. As noted above, his medieval
Arabic block print is now owned by the Gutenberg Museum. Permission to publish that mag-
nicent example was kindly granted by the museum director, Dr. Eva Hanebutt-Benz; the
image was obtained through the kind ofces of her colleague Dr. Claus Maywald-Pitellos,
Curator. My contact at the Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg, Mr. Daniel
xii PREFACE

Bournemann, was instrumental in helping me obtain the photo of that institution’s example
of Arabic block printing.
At various times during this project, I have received generous nancial support which en-
abled me to continue my investigations. Dr. Michael R. Cheney, formerly Associate Provost
and Director of Research at Drake University, made funds available for travel to collections in
the United States; the Center for the Humanities at Drake and two of its previous directors,
Prof. Richard O. Abel and Prof. Andrew Herman, provided me with the means to visit collec-
tions in the United States as well as in Great Britain and Ireland. The Drake University Center
for the Humanities also provided funding for the purchase of some of the images.
My ‘grand tour’ of Europe, undertaken to study Arabic block printed amulets in the col-
lections of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, the Ägyptisches Museum and
the Museum für Islamische Kunst, both in Berlin, the library of the Institut für Papyrologie,
Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg and of Mr. J.W.Th. van Meeuwen in the Hague,
was supported most generously by a grant from the American Philosophical Society, and I
want to express my deepest gratitude to that illustrious body for its contribution to this project.
I hope they feel that their patience in awaiting the publication of this work has been rewarded.
My success in winning the APS grant is due in no small measure to the wise counsel provided
by Iris Cofn, formerly of Drake University’s development ofce. Her knowledge of grant writ-
ing proved to be invaluable. Without the monetary assistance of the American Philosophical
Society and Drake University, this work could not have been completed.
Dr. James Keenan of the Classical Studies Department at Loyola University of Chicago
generously shared his research on thirteenth century Fayyum, the locus of discovery for many
of the block printed amulets treated below.
Over the course of my work on the various pieces that comprise this catalogue, I have been
helped in numerous ways, wittingly or unwittingly, by other scholars, colleagues and friends.
Their interest and encouragement have sustained my efforts over the long course of this proj-
ect. Andras Riedlmayer of the Fine Art Library, Harvard University, Michael L. Bates, Curator
of Islamic Coins at the American Numismatic Society, Jere L. Bacharach, Director of the
Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Dr. Christopher Wright
of the Department of Manuscripts in the British Library, Sheila Canby, Assistant Keeper of
Islamic Art and Antiquities at the British Museum, Ursula Dreibholz, Dr. Chris Murphy, Area
Specialist (Turcica) at the Library of Congress, all helped at one time or another in providing
leads to obscure holdings, verifying references and keeping me from chasing mirages.
Early on, Dr. Dana Sajdi shared her knowledge of many of the Metropolitan Museum’s
block prints with me, transcribed some of their texts, and helped in deciphering of some of the
more difcult lines of the Scheide tarsh. Dr. Mohammad H. Faghfoory lent his expertise with
Arabic manuscripts to that endeavor as well and his continued strong interest in this project
has helped to sustain it. Dr. Cornelia al-Khaled read through transcriptions of the Scheide
and Metropolitan Museum texts and made helpful suggestions. Amy Namowitz Worthen cast
an expert engraver’s eye on the amulets in the Metropolitan Museum, offering keen insights
about how the print blocks might have been made. Her enthusiastic interest and ready sharing
of her observations are much appreciated. Prof. Phillip Chen of Drake University, a master
print maker, introduced me to the processes involved in making a print by hand and in so doing
enabled me to gain a deeper understanding of certain features of the nal product. Wajih
Halawa, a young man with an impressive range of useful talents, proofread my transcriptions
 PREFACE xiii

and interpretations of virtually all the amuletic texts, created a useful electronic database for
information about the block prints, and suggested possible sources in which some of the more
obscure prayers and textual formulae might be found. Matt Esposito of Drake University’s
Department of History helped me formulate an approach to a treatment of the historical
context of Arabic amulets. Allen Scult of Drake’s Department of Philosophy and Religion and
my friend and former colleague Barbara Hodgdon, now at the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, provided invaluable critical readings and proofreadings of large sections of the text.
At Brill, Trudy Kamperveen and Caroline van Erp held my hand, provided astute guidance
and knowledgeable assistance, and shepherded this work through the publication process with
the skill and expertise for which that publisher is properly renowned. My sincere thanks goes
to them for their efforts.
Finally, I am grateful to my colleagues in Cowles Library for their interest in my project and
their patience in awaiting its completion. I am certain that they thought, at times, that it would
never come to fruition. The electronic expertise of Marc Davis and Bruce Gilbert at a late
stage of the manuscript’s genesis are particularly to be noted.
One person who never doubted that it would see the light of day is Vibs Petersen, whose
condence in my ability to see this work through never wavered and whose support, wisdom,
guidance, and commitment to the highest scholarly principles have sustained and inspired me
for more than twenty years. My thanks to her cannot ever be adequately expressed. In the nal
analysis, however, the ultimate responsibility for what is recorded between these covers is mine
and any shortcomings, omissions or errors are to be laid at my feet alone.
 INTRODUCTION

Printing, as we understand the term today, refers to the mechanical reproduction of text and
images. For the past ve hundred and fty years, and until the advent of electronic printing, the
reproduction of text has been accomplished most often through the use of moveable type. To
create a page of printed text, reverse images of each letter of the alphabet, in various sizes, and
styles, along with all the requisite punctuation marks and textual embellishments, are individu-
ally cast in metal. These letter forms—the type—are then arranged to form words, sentences
and paragraphs. The resulting assembly constitutes a matrix for a printed page. The matrix is
then installed in a machine, a printing press, where the type is coated with ink. A sheet of paper
is positioned so as to make contact with the matrix and the machine is activated, putting pres-
sure on the paper and the matrix so that the ink is transferred from the matrix to the surface
of the paper. The paper is then removed and, if the work has been done properly, an exact
replica of the text in the matrix appears on the paper. In manufacturing a book, this process is
repeated until the required number of copies of each page has been produced.
Early printing presses were hand operated and closely resembled the wine presses from which
they were adapted. During the industrial revolution in eighteenth and nineteenth-century
Europe, water, steam and, ultimately, electrical power were exploited to increase the speed with
which printing could be accomplished and the amount of printed material produced. Not only
were the presses gradually improved, so also were the methods by which the type was created.
Throughout much of the history of printing by moveable type, the arrangement of the type
relied on the hand setting of individual letters. Eventually, most typesetting, particularly that
for newspapers, popular magazines and books came to be performed on machines that cre-
ated entire lines of type. The sophistication of the machinery used to create the printed page
has increased greatly over the past six centuries. The speed with which the type was cast and
set grew exponentially to the point where text could be printed almost on demand. Until the
advent of electronic computing and ink jet and laser printing, printing with moveable type was
generally accomplished by some variation of the processes described above.
However, printing was not always produced in this way. Studies of printing history that
address the pre-Gutenberg evolution of printing and alternate printing methods have often
been overshadowed by those emphasizing the invention of moveable type. And while the suc-
cessful commercialization of printing with moveable type is rightly attributed to its European
developers, that step was preceded by centuries of experimentation across numerous lands and
cultures. Evidence of such activity exists and can be found in dozens of museums and libraries
across the world.
The impulse to create multiple copies of a single pattern, design, or mark certainly was
not limited to one people, nor, indeed, to one medium. Long before moveable type appeared,
repetitive patterns were being imprinted on cloth and impressed in wet plaster. The ancient
Egyptians did this with ceramic cylinder seals; the Koreans, Japanese and Chinese also
with carved wooden blocks, beginning around 700 CE.1 Among many medieval cultures,

1
On this, see Pow-Key Sohn, “Printing in China” (pp. 211–213) and “Early Korean Printing,” (pp. 217–231)
and Luther Carrington Goodrich, “Two new Discoveries of Early Block Prints,” (pp. 214–216) all in Der Gegenwärtige
2 INTRODUCTION

semi-precious stones were incised with the names or insignia of their owners; these were pressed
into hot wax to seal documents or coated with ink to place marks of ownership on manuscripts
and books. Molds and later, metal stamps, were made to mint metal coins bearing the like-
nesses of emperors, kings and queens and their names and titles. The mass production of words
and texts stretches some considerable distance into the past, long antedating the appearance of
the rst page printed by means of moveable type.
While any direct connection between the production of coins, stamped cloth or block printed
images and the printing of texts remains speculative,2 the essential principle underlying the cre-
ation of such objects—the fashioning of a mirror image of the form or text to be printed—is
the same as that for printing on paper. The primary difference between printing with moveable
type and earlier analogues lies in the fact that the former is accomplished through the use of
individually cast letters and the latter by carving or etching by hand—or by casting—an entire
text or image into a at surface, a printing block.
Printing with wooden blocks, also known as xylography, was a painstaking and time-
consuming process. Pierce Butler, curator of the typography collection in Chicago’s Newberry
Library during the 1920s, provides a vivid picture of the task in The Origin of Printing in Europe:
To engrave a stamp large enough to produce a whole page must have been a slow and difcult op-
eration. The workman, after drawing the picture or text in reverse on his block, would have to cut
down the wood in such a way as to leave this graphic pattern as an elevated surface. Every portion
of the block that was intended to remain blank in the imprint must be gouged away sufciently to
prevent its touching the paper and transferring ink to it. This required sharp tools and a sure hand
to guide them. The hollow letters would be especially difcult. The white center of even the tiniest
character had to be cut out quite deeply, yet without marring the rim that inclosed [sic] it. If the
tool slipped even slightly, it might shave off portions of the surface needed in the imprint, and so
the whole block would be ruined unless the workman could devise means for repairing it. His desire
to save damaged blocks, upon which days of labor had already been expended, must have been a
constant spur to his ingenuity. We can imagine him driving pegs, making inlays, and gluing new
sections to salvaged portions with ever greater skill and delicacy.3
Despite the limitations posed by the tools, the workers’ skills and the properties of the materials
from which the blocks were carved, such work was done, often with elegant results—witness
the numerous block printed artifacts on view in libraries and museums world-wide.

BLOCK PRINTING IN ASIA AND Its TRANSMISSION TO THE WEST

A substantial amount of physical and textual evidence exists which illustrates the role of the
inhabitants of Asian lands in printing history, and specically in block printing. The Japanese

Stand der Gutenberg-Forschung, (Stuttgart, 1972). All three cultures seem to have been at roughly the same level of print-
ing technology in the eighth century CE. The letters “CE” following dates given in this work are the abbreviation
for the Common (or Christian) Era, and replaces the older form “AD” (Anno Domini).
2
At least insofar as Arabic block printing is concerned. The work of Naveh and Shaked, in Magic Spells and
Formulae ( Jerusalem, 1993) suggests the possibility that someone made the connection between the images produced
by the reverse of an incised amulet and the creation of letters, but tangible proof of such a connection has yet to
be discovered. Examples of Hebrew amulets incised on metal are numerous as evidenced by plates 1–18 showing
amulets 16–32 in Magic Spells and Formulae. However, if, when and where the jump was made from engraved metal
amulets to printing matrices remains an unresolved issue.
3
Pierce Butler, The Origin of Printing in Europe, (Chicago, 1940), p. 34.
 INTRODUCTION 3

and Chinese were the originators of the technique of block printing as well as being pioneers
in the manufacture of paper: the coincidental emergence of two technologies superbly suited
to one another perhaps helps to explain why printing rst appeared in that part of the world.
Moreover, the vast bureaucratic and educational institutions of the Chinese governments made
extensive use of paper and printing in carrying out their responsibilities, with the result that
paper and knowledge of its manufacture spread to the furthest reaches of Chinese inuence,
to Central Asia, into the lands of the Muslim Middle East and, ultimately, to Europe.
Europe’s indebtedness to Asia for its role in introducing paper—rst to Italy and then to
the rest of Europe—has long been acknowledged.4 The art of papermaking was transmitted
from the Chinese to the Arabs sometime around the middle of the eighth century CE, possibly
through the capture of Chinese paper makers as prisoners of war; yet however the transfer of
papermaking technology occurred, it was an immediate success. Adopted by the Arabs for use
in their own rapidly developing and far-ung governmental, commercial and nancial institu-
tions, paper use surpassed that of all other writing materials within two centuries in all but the
most remote regions. Through trading contacts, paper came to the notice of Europeans some-
time in the eleventh century. And by Gutenberg’s time, its use in Europe was common.
For hundreds of years, it was assumed by those in the West that printing was invented in
Europe. Indeed, many books written on printing, even within the past ten years, still give the
impression that moveable type originated there; fourteenth-century European block books and
Gutenberg’s moveable type have been brought forth to support such a claim. Only at the be-
ginning of the twentieth century, with the discovery of incontrovertible proof of Chinese print-
ing that pre-dated Gutenberg, was this notion displaced. In 1907, Sir Aurel Stein discovered,
in a cave in China, a block printed book bearing a date equivalent to the year 868 CE,5 nearly
six centuries before Gutenberg. Well crafted, the work indicates a level of skill commensurate
with a long tradition of practice. By the early 1100s, that is, less than a century and a half from
the original creation of Stein’s discovery, printing with moveable type was already well into in
the experimental stage in China.6
What is fascinating about this progression of events is the disconnection that seems to occur
between the history of paper and that of printing. At some point, as the two technologies
crept westward across the Central Asian steppes, their lockstep progress seems to have been
interrupted. There are strong indications that the invention of printing both in China—and
later in Europe—followed closely on the heels of the invention of paper. Why, then, when the
invention of paper is so readily attributed to the Chinese, has there been less attention paid to
their contribution, and that of other non-Europeans, to the development of printing? More to
the point for this present project, the intermediary role played by the Arabs in the transmission
of papermaking technology to Europe is recognized while similar recognition has not been
accorded to the Arabs with regard to printing technology.

4
The classic study on the history of papermaking is Dard Hunter’s Papermaking: the History and Technique of an
Ancient Craft, (New York, 1978). Useful for the advent of paper in the Middle East are Helen Loveday, Islamic Paper:
a Study of the Ancient Craft, (s.l., 2001) and Thomas Francis Carter, The Invention of Printing in China and its Spread West-
ward, 2nd ed., (New York, 1955). Most recently, one may consult Jonathan M. Bloom, Paper Before Print: the History and
Impact of Paper in the Islamic World, (New Haven, 2001).
5
For an image of the so-called Diamond Sutra, go to: http://www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/diamond.html.
6
For a readable account of this history, see Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: the
Impact of Printing, 1450 –1800. Translated by David Gerard, (London, 1990), pp. 71–76.
4 INTRODUCTION

In part, this may be the result of a Euro-centric worldview. Certainly a number of factors
led to the rapid and pervasive expansion of printing in Europe and the resultant cultural
transformation it helped to bring about. As I have mentioned, it is in Europe that printing
with moveable type achieved its rst and perhaps greatest commercial success—with much, if
not most, of that success due to Johann Gutenberg’s invention. However, that same success
has often obscured the historical importance of printing technology which not only preceded
Gutenberg but also occurred outside of Europe. Even today, when knowledge of the existence
of earlier printing is fairly widespread, books with titles such as John Man’s Gutenberg: How One
Man Remade the World with Words7 continue to appear. No matter that these works (and Man’s is
no exception) acknowledge the existence of printing—even moveable type printing—before
Gutenberg, the titles alone suggests that the man named therein is the person responsible for the
invention of printing. We now know this not to be the case and yet the myth that he invented
printing is perpetuated while awareness of earlier methods of printing in other parts of the
world remains in the shadows.
Block printing is one of these methods and, as the immediate precursor of moveable type
printing, one of the most signicant for understanding the evolution of the printing craft. That
medieval Arabs were engaged in the printing of texts with wood blocks has been a matter of
historical record for more than one hundred years. Despite awareness of this within certain
academic circles, scant attention has been paid to the known examples of Arab block printing
and no effort has been given to any systematic inquiry of it. As I will detail further in a subse-
quent chapter, public attention was rst drawn to the existence of Arabic block printing in the
mid-1890s with the inclusion of several examples in an exhibition of Egyptian Arabic artifacts
mounted in a Viennese museum. A catalogue of the exhibition, complete with an illustration
of one of the block prints, was published. Scholarly articles briey mentioning Arabic block
prints had begun to appear already at the beginning of that decade. Yet, eleven years later,
one Andre Geiss would write a two-part article, from Egypt, describing how the French under
Napoleon had introduced printing to Egypt.8
Perhaps, at the time, Messr. Geiss was unaware of the Arabic block prints; news traveled
much more slowly in those days, and after all, he was in Egypt, while the exhibition of Arabic
block prints took place in Europe. However, some willful denial seems to have been operat-
ing here as well, for just one year after the second installment of Geiss’s article appeared, he
wrote another short piece for the same journal9 in which he took issue with the contention that
medieval Arabs knew about printing. That claim had been made by Josef Hammer Purgstall,
who published a brief article describing a medieval Arabic treatise which seems to refer in one
instance to an activity which sounds suspiciously like printing.10 Geiss sounds haughtily dismis-
sive in responding to such an idea:

7
New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002. This is only one of hundreds of books published on Gutenberg. Other
titles would include: Wolfgang Dobras, Gutenberg, Man of the Millennium: From a Secret Enterprise to the First Media Revolu-
tion, (Mainz, 2000); Michael Pollard, Johann Gutenberg: the Story of the Invention of Movable Type and How Printing led to a
Knowledge Explosion, (Watford, Herts, UK, 1994), among many others.
8
Andre Geiss, ‘Histoire de l’Imprimerie en Égypte,’ Bulletin de l’Institut égyptien 5th ser., 1 (1907), pp. 133–157;
5th ser., 2 (1908), pp. 195–220.
9
“Note sur l’Origine de l’Imprimerie Arabe en Europe par F. Bonola Bey,” Bulletin de l’Institut égyptien 5th ser.,
3 (1909), pp. 74–80. On Bonola Bey’s article, see below.
10
On this article, see below. Josef von Hammer Purgstall, “Sur un passage curieux de l’Ihathet,” Journal Asiatique
4th serie, v. 20 (1852), pp. 252–255.
 INTRODUCTION 5

It is impossible, given the evidence, to assert that the Arabs, even though they were the masters of
Spain until 1469, could have known the art of Gutenberg, which was not introduced until 1468,
even though it was invented about 1440. This [i.e. the Arabic] work can be nothing more than a
copy of a European treatise on printing, the appearance of technical books on this industry having
occurred only very recently.11
As I will show, the Arabs of the medieval Middle East were, indeed, involved in the produc-
tion of block printed texts. Contrary to the notion that the technology of printing somehow
bypassed them, the Arabs have left substantial evidence that block printing was a craft with
which many in the medieval Islamic world (ca. 900–ca. 1400 CE) were familiar. The most
common texts to have survived are amulets—that is, amulets are the type of document most
frequently found to date in museum and library collections and are the primary focus of this
study. Depending on how one construes the rare and problematic allusions to block printing
found in Arabic historical and literary texts, however, the craft was employed to meet a variety
of purposes, several examples of which are described and analyzed in this volume.
Block printed Arabic texts from fourteen institutions and private collections are represented
here, a total of fty-ve individual pieces exhibiting diverse levels of creative skill, artistic
execution and literary accomplishment. In order to place our knowledge of these pieces in
context, I survey the current state of research about them and identify those medieval Arabic
texts which may contain information about the practice of block printing. In addition, I have
drawn up a census of the pieces in each collection indicating what has been published about
those amulets that have been studied. As I have mentioned, virtually all studies to date are
focused on individual examples or small groups and, with rare exceptions, they fail to provide
sufcient direction for investigations on a more elaborate scale. Although I have limited my
study to collections, libraries, and museums in Europe and North America, I am aware that
Arabic block prints are to be found in similar institutions in the Arabic speaking world. Given
the necessary resources and sufcient time, I hope to undertake a similar volume that considers
those examples in the future.
The overarching intent of the material presented here is to promote interest in an area of
medieval Islamic cultural history that I believe to have been sorely neglected or, at best, under-
appreciated. This foray represents a modest attempt to provide a resource for broader and
more sophisticated research into the area by future scholars. By shedding some light on this
body of material culture, I hope to provide an impetus to further study in the eld of Arabic
printing history and a fuller appreciation of the people and cultures that produced the artifacts
illustrated here. To that end, I provide, in addition to the catalog of block prints comprising
the central part of this study, passages from the relevant Arabic historical and literary texts that
refer to (or which can be construed as referring to) block printing in the medieval Islamic world

11
Andre Geiss, “Observations de M. Geiss a la suite de la note de M. Bonola Bey,” Bulletin de l’Institut égyptien 5th
ser. 3 (1909), p. 84. “Il n’est guère possible, avec les données actuelles, d’admettre que les Arabes, même maitres de
l’Espagne jusqu’en 1469, aient connu l’art de Gutenberg qui n’y fut introduit qu’en 1468, quoique inventé depuis
1440.”
“Cet ouvrage ne peut non plus être une copie d’un traité européen de l’imprimerie, l’apparition des livres tech-
niques de cette industrie étant beaucoup plus récente.” English translation mine. A similar translation is offered by
H.A. Avakian, in ‘Islam and the art of printing’ in Uit Bibliotheektuin en Informatieveld, (Utrecht, 1978), pp. 259–60.
6 INTRODUCTION

and a complete bibliography of those scholarly works published to date on Arabic block print-
ing. The latter includes works dealing with the re-discovery of examples as well as scholarly
treatments of individual pieces and collections. In short, what I have wanted to provide here
is a source book that will serve as a starting point for more detailed and focused investigations.
Should just one such study be undertaken, my own effort will have been amply rewarded.
 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT
OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

Given the scant coeval historical evidence for medieval Arabic block printing and the even
more limited archaeological data for the provenance and vintage of surviving examples of
block printed amulets bearing Arabic script, any attempt to understand their role or place in
the societies that produced them is speculative at best. Innumerable examples of handwritten
and three-dimensional (i.e. pendants, signet rings, plaques, bowls, etc.) Arabic amulets from
the medieval period are extant and for this larger group of cultural artifacts a much more sub-
stantial body of scholarship exists.1 However, if we are willing to accept what I would suggest
is a reasonable hypothesis: that the block printed amulets served essentially the same role in
medieval Islamic cultures as the handwritten variety—to offer protection against a variety of
dangers or to assist their wearers to achieve specic spiritual or material ends—then it should
be possible to draw some conclusions about them. In order to accomplish this, it is necessary
to place these artifacts in their appropriate context.
Calligraphic and limited archaeological evidence2 suggests that workers in Arabic block
printing were active roughly between 900 CE and 1430 CE, although other kinds of amulets
had been in use for quite some time prior to this. It is beyond the scope of this study to offer a
history of amulets in the Middle East; rather, this chapter, in general terms, will focus on that
era known as the Late Antique. That period is calculated to begin approximately with the birth
of Christ and to end with the Islamic conquest of the Middle East at the beginning of the sev-
enth century CE. It is not my intention to present an exhaustive examination of those centuries
but rather to give the reader a sense of the intellectual, theological and sociological currents
that arguably had an impact on the production and use of amulets at that time, and that per-
haps provided some of the conditions necessary for their adoption and continued employment
in the period of Muslim cultural hegemony which followed the decline of Byzantium.
With regard to amulets as a cultural phenomenon, it is important to remember that such
objects, popularly believed to provide their owners with a prophylactic or apotropaic effect
against a variety of real or imaginary dangers, or to endow them with certain abilities or
powers, have long been a feature of life in the Middle East (as they have been elsewhere).
Their production and use pre-date Judaism, Christianity and Islam by millennia. Over time,
they have appeared in a variety of forms and were created from a broad range of materials.

1
Any listing of relevant works must include E.A. Wallis Budge’s Amulets and Superstitions, originally published by
Oxford University Press (1930), reprinted by Dover Publications (1978). This work has the virtue of placing Arabic
amulets in the context of amulets from other Near Eastern cultures, both ancient and modern. Friedrich Bilabel and
Adolf Grohmann’s Griechische, koptische und arabische Texte zur Religion und religiösen Literatur in Ägyptens Spätzeit, (Heidel-
berg, 1934) is very useful as are the two articles by Tewk Canaan, “Decipherment of Arabic Talismans,” Berytus:
Archaeological Studies, v. 4 & 5 (1937). One should also consult Jean Marquès-Rivière’s Amulettes, Talismans et Pantacles
dans les traditions orientales et occidentals, (Paris, 1972) and the Catalogue of Islamic Seals and Talismans by Ludvik Kalus,
(Oxford, 1986). The works of Peter Schienerl on jewelry and ornamental amulets, some of which are cited herein,
are also very valuable. More relevant works are listed in the bibliography at the end of the present volume.
2
Only a few examples of block printed Arabic amulets have been found in situ in archaeological excavations. To
my knowledge, the only examples of excavated block prints to have been published to date are found in Wladyslaw
Kubiak and George T. Scanlon, Fuɢʢ Expedition Final Report, Vol. 2: Fuɢʢ-C, (Winona Lake, 1989).
8 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

Organic items—animal skin, feathers, bones, pollen, herbs, wood—as well as minerals, pre-
cious and semi-precious stones, metal and paper have all been employed at various historic and
pre-historic junctures to avert misfortune from—and afford protection or advantage to—their
owners. In some cases, the power attributed to an amulet was perceived to be inherent in the
object itself. Such an object was believed to be possessed of a spirit or supernatural power and
therefore required no human embellishment in order to reap its benet. A tiger claw fashioned
into a necklace, for example, might be seen to embody that animal’s strength or speed, and to
confer those properties on the person wearing it.
In other instances, the object was more elaborate, incorporating such elements as a carving
or engraving in the form of the spirit—in animist cultures, a bear, for example—whose aid was
being sought. A further enhancement might be the inclusion in the composition of the amulet
of an item associated with that particular power. In this manner, zodiacal amulets frequently
featured pendants or inlays of a particular stone associated with the planet whose power the
amulet represented. Additional decoration in the form of ‘magic’ symbols, alphabetic charac-
ters and the like, engraved into or painted onto the object, are also not uncommon. Over time,
amulets tended to become increasingly elaborate in their appearance, design, and symbology.
Across the ages, while talismanic objects continued in use, amulets composed of words,
in articial or occult as well as common alphabets, became increasingly popular. As one
researcher notes,3 the advent of the written word immeasurably enhanced the power of those
members of the religious establishment who formulated prayers to enlarge the umbrella of
sacred protection for members of their communities. Since ancient times, priests and other
holy persons had uttered verbal assurances of divine guardianship over the heads of congre-
gants or into the ears of individuals. Once such assurances could be written down in physical
form, it became possible to extend, both in range and duration, the power of the Word to
keep evil away. Bearing the appropriate formulae in writing on one’s person came to be seen
as a way of perpetuating the invocation to whatever spirit or deity was believed to provide the
desired sanctuary, relief, or cure sought.4
In the late antique period, many cultures in the Middle East shared a belief in supernatural
powers and, more importantly, in the ability of humans to exert some inuence over those
powers. These beliefs can be traced back to much earlier times. The ancient Egyptians left an
assortment of objects thought to impart protection from, or control over, supernatural forces.
Ceramic scarabs and the ankh, the crucix with the distinctive loop at the top, are just two of
the most recognizable examples,5 but written amulets were produced as well. Babylonians,
Phoenicians and Assyrians made amulets of clay:6 some were in the form of animals, others
represented fantastic creatures; still others were textual. The Romans and Greeks produced
curse tablets comprised of thin lead sheets onto which wishes for harm to an individual were

3
Peter W. Schienerl, Schmuck und Amulett in Antike und Islam, (Aachen, 1988), pp. 10–11.
4
Buddhist prayer wheels operate in somewhat analogous fashion. In that practice, prayers written on paper are
placed in a specialized container which is then spun about an axis. Each revolution of the wheel equates to one
recitation of the prayer; the more the prayer is spun, the more repetitions are made and the power of the prayer is
thereby magnied.
5
Recent works in this eld include Carol Andrews, Amulets of Ancient Egypt, (London, 1994) and Geraldine Pinch,
Magic in Ancient Egypt, (London, 1994).
6
See E.A. Wallis Budge, Amulets and Superstitions, (New York, 1978), pp. 82–126 & 250–257.
 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING 9

inscribed.7 These were rolled in the manner of scrolls and worn under the clothing. The East-
ern Romans and Christians of the rst centuries following the birth of Christ often wore bullae,
hemispheric objects of wood or metal which carried magic signs and inscriptions and which
sometimes contained compartments into which were placed powders or other substances
thought to provide the wearer protection against magic.8 The purpose of all such devices was
to ward off evil in all its multiplicity of forms.9
The Jews created, used and apparently dealt in protective amulets. Many of their amulets
were comprised of—or contained passages from—sacred texts and were written on paper,
painted onto ceramics or engraved on metal.10 Coptic Christian Egyptians composed textual
amulets as early as the second century CE and their work incorporates many of the elements
of neighboring cultures.11 In similar fashion, the Arabs of the pre-Islamic era sought protec-
tion from unseen forces through the use of charms. One of these, the tamÒma (pl. tamÊxim), was
a white or black speckled stone worn on a cord around the neck; it was used to protect children
from the evil eye.12
Extensive archeological and literary evidence proves that the Arabs continued to make use
of amulets after the advent of Islam. That they incorporated into these amulets elements of
the Islamic belief system is borne out by evidence contained in surviving examples from this
time as well as in texts relating to their creation and use.13 How amulets evolved in this period
has much to do with the social, religious and cultural dynamics at work in the Middle East at
the time of the rise of Islam. For Muslims, as well as for Christians and Jews, the essential issue
regarding the employment of amulets was intimately related to the nature of the relationship
between humans and God. At one time or other, clerics of all three of the monotheistic reli-
gions expressed concern about the use of amulets to invoke divine intervention and affect the
lives of people. It is perhaps an indication of the pervasiveness of popular recourse to amulets
that the leadership of all three religions felt obligated to address the matter.
The religious landscape of the Late Antique period was complicated by a political climate
dominated by a protracted conict between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sasanian
Empire, which ruled in Persia. By the middle of the seventh century of the Christian era,
these two superpowers of their age had been engaged in intermittent warfare for the better
part of a century, with neither able to gain a decisive advantage over the other. In the years
just prior to the advent of Islam, their conict had devolved into a war of attrition. In this
contest, both the Sasanians and the Byzantines engaged client groups to carry out raids and
incursions against enemy territories. The employment of Arab tribal confederations created

7
Emilie Savage-Smith, “Introduction: Magic and Divination in Early Islam,” in Magic and Divination in Early
Islam, Emilie Savage-Smith, ed., (Aldershot, Hants, 2004), p. xxi.
8
Budge, Amulets and Superstitions, pp. 14–15. On Byzantine amulets, see Jeffrey Spier, “Medieval Byzantine Magi-
cal Amulets and Their Tradition,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes v. 56 (1993), pp. 25–62.
9
Budge, Amulets and Superstitions, p. 14.
10
On this, see Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity, ( Jerusalem, 1985),
pp. 13 ff., as well as their subsequent work, Magic Spells and Formulae: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity, (Jerusalem,
1993). A study of the texts of Hebrew amulets is found in Theodore Schrire, Hebrew Magic Amulets: their Decipherment
and Interpretation, (New York, 1966).
11
Marvin W. Meyer and Richard Smith, eds., Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power, (Princeton,
1999).
12
T. Fahd, “TamÒma,” EI2, V. 10, p. 177 and J. Ruska and B. Carra de Vaux, “Tilsam,” EI2, V. 10, p. 500.
13
On this, see David Pingree, “Some of the Sources for the GhÊyat al-ÆakÒm,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes v. 43 (1980), pp. 1–15.
10 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

further complications for the two empires and ultimately did little to alter the outcome of the
wars. It took the arrival of powerful Muslim Arab armies from the south in the mid-600s to
break the stalemate.
In the seventh and eighth centuries CE, Muslim Arab armies pushed vigorously outward
from the Arabian Peninsula, east into Iraq, Persia and Central Asia, west into Egypt and North
Africa, and northeast into the lands of the eastern Mediterranean coast. In every direction,
they encountered ancient established civilizations that, once subdued, brought the conquerors
into contact with new ideas, new technologies, and new forms of cultural expression. In the
rst ush of imperial power, the Arabs seized upon these trappings as a type of validation of
their own recently acquired authority.
Greek philosophy, particularly theology, gave them the tools with which to defend and pro-
mulgate the tenets of their faith. The adoption and continuation of Christian medicine as
practiced under the Sasanids of Persia provided them with the means to treat diseases, physical
ailments, and injuries more efcaciously than they had been able to do until then. A knowledge
of structural engineering and architecture acquired from Greek engineers and builders en-
abled the Muslims to create distinctive houses of worship, a variety of other civic and military
buildings, and, ultimately, their own architectural vernacular. The mosque, that distinctive
Islamic structure one nds in virtually every Middle Eastern city, came to serve not only as a
locus for Muslim religious practice but also as a symbol of the ascendancy of Islam and its role
as the preeminent religious and cultural force in that part of the world.
Islam emerged into a world characterized by a mosaic of competing, often conicting, reli-
gions. Although monotheism was making serious inroads on the spiritual landscape, none had
cornered the market on people’s religious sensibilities, and, in fact, there was arguably more
diversity in the beliefs held in the region in this period than there had been for some time
heretofore. Christianity, a mere seven centuries old in the mid-600s of the present era, was still
wrestling with such fundamental theological issues as the nature of Christ. Little more than
three centuries had passed since the conversion of the Emperor Constantine and the estab-
lishment of Christianity as the ofcial religion of the Byzantine Empire. Though by this time
widely practiced, Christianity was scarcely unied in its doctrine and numerous confessional
variants were competing vigorously to gain adherents and, through them, greater legitimacy.
The two largest factions were the Nestorians and the Monophysites. The Nestorians held
the view that Christ was at once human and divine, both parts of his nature being perfect
and inseparable; the Monophysites countered that Jesus had but a single nature and that it
was divine.14 The relative fortunes of these two positions ebbed and owed; despite efforts to
settle the dispute rationally, most notably at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE, there were
periodic campaigns of suppression during which adherents of one group or the other suffered
expulsion or yet more severe sanction. Converts and champions, sought by each side, included
the major political gures of both the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires, as well as the Arabs
who dwelt at the margins of those two polities. In addition, a number of other confessions em-
bracing varying measures of Christianity, Gnosticism and even paganism—the Manichaeans,

14
For readable accounts of this history, see F.E. Peters, The Harvest of Hellenism: a History of the Near East from Alex-
ander the Great to the Triumph of Christianity, (New York, 1970) and Allah’s Commonwealth: a history of Islam in the Near East
600–1100 AD, (New York, 1973) and the bibliographies listed in those two works.
 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING 11

Daysanites and Sabians are the most prominent—were attempting to promulgate their own
particular theological viewpoints with varying degrees of success.15
Christianity in the sixth and seventh centuries CE was in the ascendant. However, pagans
were still to be found practicing their rites in numerous locations throughout the region. They,
too, continued to profess a multitude of beliefs ranging from imperial cult polytheism, to wor-
ship of localized deities and spirits, to a dualistic ‘theology’ which postulated a struggle be-
tween the forces of a luminous and ethereal purity against those of a dark and malevolent
materiality. One must consider that the ‘paganism’ of late antiquity was not the paganism of
the Classical world. As Jonathan Berkey puts it, “paganism—or more accurately, some of the
paganisms of late antiquity—had moved a good distance from the religion of Homer and
Ramses, and in many respects shared a good deal with the Christian and Islamic traditions
which replaced it.”16
Although polytheism within the Byzantine Empire was ofcially and vehemently suppressed
in the middle of the sixth Christian century,17 polytheists continued to be found across South-
west Asia, not only in remote regions of the Byzantine Empire but also in the Sasanian Empire.
The most notable of these were the so-called Sabians of Harran, whose theology, a complex
blend of polytheism, Gnosticism, and Hermeticism, completely ummoxed the Muslims at
the time of their initial contact, toward the beginning of the ninth century CE.18 It must be
remembered, too, that the Arabs of this time were themselves no more than a few generations
removed from polytheism; it was Muhammad, after all, who ordered the removal of pagan im-
ages from the Ka{ba in Mecca after his triumphant Muslim forces seized that city in 630 CE.
Remnants of pagan practice no doubt lingered in many places in the Arabian Peninsula, even
after Islam was formally declared the one true faith there.
To the east, in Persia, Zoroastrianism, a reformed type of Magianism, had experienced a
renaissance under the Sasanians. The then-reigning Shah, Khusraw I (531–579), restored it as
the state religion in the aftermath of a challenge to the state from a lapsed Zoroastrian priest
named Mazdak, who preached a radical social brand of Manichaeism that sought to com-
munize all property and level all social classes.19 Zoroastrianism is a prophetic religion with
a revealed scripture that, not unlike Christianity, offers salvation to the souls of its adherents.
According to its belief system, humanity can be redeemed through the understanding that

15
Peters, Allah’s Commonwealth, pp. 267–269 and passim and Michael G. Morony, Iraq After the Muslim Conquest,
(Princeton, 1984), pp. 403–404. See also the relevant articles in Encyclopaedia of Islam: On the Daysanites, A. Abel,
“DayÉanÒyya,” EI2, V. 2, p. 199; on the Manichaeans, C.E. Bosworth, “MÊnÒ,” EI2, V. 6, p. 421; on the Sabians,
T. Fahd, “ÂÊbixa,” EI2, V. 8, pp. 675–678, esp. section 2, and the sources cited in the bibliographies for each of these
entries.
16
Jonathan P. Berkey, The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600–1800, (Cambridge, 2003),
p. 33.
17
Peters, Harvest of Hellenism, pp. 715–718.
18
The classic study of this group was done by D.A. Khvolson, Der Ssabier und der Ssabismus, (St. Petersburg, 1856–);
also reprinted twice: Amsterdam and New York, both 1956). See also the article on the Sabians in the Encylopaedia
of Islam cited above in note 15, as well as another EI2 entry, F.C. De Blois, “ÂÊbix,” V. 8, pp. 672–675, and the refer-
ences listed there. The Harranians were ultimately able to convince the Arabs that they were the Sabians mentioned
in the QurxÊn and therefore protected as one of the ‘people of the Book,’ those monotheistic religions acknowledged
by Islam as possessing divinely revealed scriptures and therefore special dispensation to continue following their
beliefs and performing their rituals.
19
Seen as heretical and a threat to the state, it was crushed by force. See A.J. Carnoy, “Zoroastrianism,” Ency-
clopaedia of Religion and Ethics, James Hastings, ed., (New York, 1908–1926), V. 12, p. 867. Also, in the same work,
R.A. Nicholson, “Mazdak,” V. 8, pp. 508–510. For a more recent treatment, see Peters, Harvest of Hellenism, pp.
663–668.
12 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

there is in it something of the divine light that wants to return to its source. Only through
proper conduct of one’s life can such a reunion be effected.20 It is unclear just how widely prac-
ticed the religion was at the time. Certainly the fall of the Persian Empire to invading Arab
Muslim armies in the mid-eighth century and the perceived economic and social advantages
of conversion to Islam hindered that religion from further growth. Into the mix, in the eastern
and southern regions of the Sasanian state, adherents of Buddhism could be found and their
presence persisted well into the early Islamic period.21 And if this were not enough, an Indian
cultural component, bearing the marks of Hellenism inscribed upon it in the time of Alexan-
der the Great, echoed in the background.22
Judaism, the oldest of the monotheistic religions in the Near East, had been an established
presence in the region for some time. In the urbanized areas of the late antique period, its
fortunes had depended on the relative strength and tolerance of the Persians and later, the
Romans. In the aftermath rst, of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, and sec-
ond, the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 132 CE, many Jews had ed eastward to the Persian Empire,
where they were favorably received. Some Jews, however, remained within the territories of
the Eastern Roman Empire where, particularly after the establishment of Christianity as the
state religion, they were alternately tolerated and persecuted, the latter circumstance nally
culminating, in the third decade of the sixth century CE, with the denial of any legal standing
to Jews living in the Byzantine realms.23
Outside the urban centers, however, Judaism continued to be practiced and Jewish commu-
nities could be found not only in the Byzantine and Sasanian states but in those areas beyond
their sway as well. Jewish groups lived in the Arabian Peninsula; we know that one reason for
Muhammad’s departure from Mecca for the oasis of Yathrib (MadÒna) in 622 CE was to arbi-
trate a dispute involving Jewish tribes resident there. Although numerous Jewish communities,
even cities, existed in Iraq, the demographic center of Judaism at that time was Persia, where,
for several centuries, Jews had found a welcome in varying degrees of warmth and where their
numbers were most likely the greatest.24
The seeds of this mélange of cultural and religious practices were sown on elds furrowed
by the great plow of Hellenic civilization. Having fallen on lands in possession of rich indig-
enous intellectual and theological traditions, these seeds sprouted into remarkably dynamic
exchanges and syntheses of beliefs, ideas and philosophies. Some of the resultant fruits of
this cross-pollination were sterile hybrids, incapable of propagating themselves and destined
to wither quickly and die. Others were strengthened and invigorated, their progeny rendered
more vibrant and vigorous for having struck root in the fertile loam of venerable intellectual
and cultural traditions and nding nourishment there. For a time, there was a great deal of
uidity among the religions, particularly between Judaism and Christianity, but also, in varying
degrees, among other religions. To add to the complexity of this phenomenon, and to carry the
analogy one step farther, many of the offspring of these religio-social saplings fell to earth in

20
A.J. Carnoy, “Zoroastrianism,” pp. 862–868.
21
The Barmacids, a Buddhist family originally from the eastern province of Khurasan, served the early Abbasid
caliphs as viziers and patrons of literary translation activity. See Peters, Allah’s Commonwealth, pp. 158 ff.
22
See Pingree, “Some of the Sources for the GhÊyat al-ÆakÒm,” p. 2.
23
Peters, Harvest of Hellenism, pp. 716–717.
24
See Morony, Iraq After the Muslim Conquest, pp. 308–309 and Jonathan P. Berkey, The Formation of Islam, pp.
13–14.
 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING 13

the hinterlands, far from their parent stock and, if they germinated at all, grew “in attenuated
and problematic form.”25
This syncretistic impulse, the willingness (if not eagerness) to engage in exchanges of ideas
and practices, was powerful; particularly with regard to popular practices, it seems, there were
many similarities in the modes of expression of those beliefs.26 To a remarkable extent, pagans,
Jews and Christians had, for some time, been participating in each other’s religious—as well
as secular—lives, despite concerted efforts by rabbis and priests to enforce rm confessional
boundaries. As late as the fourth century CE, Jews were still proselytizing in apparently success-
ful attempts to attract new adherents, although certain Jewish authorities opposed the practice.
Conversely, some Christians saw no confessional indelity in worshipping at Jewish temples,
or being buried in Jewish cemeteries. Such evidence adds considerable weight to the argu-
ment that, among certain people, there was a perception that differences between Judaism and
Christianity were inconsequential.27 These two religions held much of scripture and tradition
in common and this, no doubt, contributed to the sense among certain of their adherents that
there was greater similarity than dissimilarity between the two.
At the same time, and overlapping with the arrival of Islam, efforts began to be undertaken
by the clergies of the various monotheistic religions to demarcate the religio-social landscape
more sharply. The religious leaderships of Christianity and Judaism seem to have been seeking
to create more distinct religious boundaries for the adherents of their faiths, perhaps in order
to establish ownership over certain religious traditions, but certainly in order to extend the po-
litical and legal authority of the clergy over the broader community.28 It is perhaps obvious that
for Jews and Christians, who shared a sacred text and certain traditions, this must have been a
vexatious undertaking. However, the impulse toward the establishment of stricter communal
boundaries also embraced the Zoroastrians. During this time, their clergy also tried to distance
their faith from Judaism,29 which was, in Persia, the principal ‘rival’ to Zoroastrianism.
The necessity of establishing clear boundaries was certainly more pressing in cities where
large numbers of people belonging to a variety of faiths dwelt in close proximity to one an-
other. Many cities in the Near East, especially those situated in the contested regions that lay
between the two warring states, had suffered serious declines in population and economic
power in the early centuries of the Christian era. However, the advent of Islam brought about
a rapid and far-reaching re-urbanization in territories that the Muslims seized from Byzantium
and Persia. The consolidation of Muslim Arab political power over much of Southwestern
Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean lands resulted in the re-settlement of many Arabs in
existing urban centers and the foundation of a number of new cities. Two settlements, Basra,
established in 636 CE, and Kufa, founded in 638 CE, were at rst military encampments, but
quickly developed into important towns. In addition, at least three new cities were founded by
Muslims in the medieval period: Baghdad in 762 CE; Cairo in 969 CE; and, further west, FÊs
(Fez) in about 1069 CE. As Jonathan Berkey has recently observed, the cities were homes to
a strong merchant class whose inuence and power often connected cities with one another.

25
Berkey, The Formation of Islam, p. 5.
26
Berkey refers to this phenomenon as a “religious koiné.” The Formation of Islam, p. 16.
27
For a more thorough treatment of this topic, see Berkey, The Formation of Islam, pp. 16–19.
28
See Morony, Iraq After the Muslim Conquest, specically chapters 11 and 12 on the Jews and Christians,
respectively.
29
Berkey, The Formation of Islam, p. 15.
14 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

Through their travels and personal connections, they helped to communicate religious as well
as secular ideas. Their activities encouraged the development of traditions that reached across
the inter-urban distances and helped to lessen the parochialism of scattered populations.30
In addition to (and no doubt overshadowing) the innumerable inter- and intra-confessional
theological disputations, other broader, more catholic forces were at work across the Near
East in late antiquity. Their inuence transcended the bounds of religion, ethnicity, linguistic
afnity and political afliation. One of the most inuential of these was Gnosticism, a body
of ideas that posited a dualistic vision of the universe and challenged other ways of knowing
with “absolutist claims for a secret gnosis at the expense of both rational discourse and an open
revelation.”31 Arising in the second Christian century, its origins are unclear. As it developed,
Gnosticism manifested itself in subtle shadings of meaning and interpretation. In general
terms, it held that creation was the result of the interplay of two forces: light and purity against
darkness and materiality.32
A disruption between these two forces, according to Gnostic mythology, resulted in a por-
tion of the light falling into the darkness, which constitutes the substance of the perceivable
universe. This light was absorbed in varying proportions, according to a strict tripartite hier-
archy, by humanity. Those people imbued with greater shares of light were the elect and were
vouchsafed redemption upon their deaths, at which time their portion of the light would return
to and become one with its source. A second group had to work for its salvation by avoiding the
temptations of the world. People of this class were obliged to live cautiously and in denial of a
prescribed list of pleasures and comforts if their souls were to win salvation. At the lowest rung
stood those whose lot it was never to be redeemed.
According to the Gnostic conception of the cosmos, the supreme being,33 the power of purity
and light, was remote and communicated with humanity, when He chose to do so, through
prophets. The management of the cosmos and the oversight of the affairs of the world, how-
ever, were the responsibility of intermediaries or factota of a sort, whose homes were the seven
celestial bodies—the sun, Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Human affairs
were conducted under the inuence of these bodies and the twelve zodiacal signs, all of which,
being part of the material world, were viewed as demonic in nature, but also as potentially
helpful.34 The inuence of these several bodies was projected by means of rays emanating from
them and it was to this aspect of the cosmic machinery that humans who possessed the neces-
sary knowledge could gain access.
Gnosticism appealed to many people across religious and cultural divisions. To varying de-
grees, it inuenced the theological and philosophical discourses of Christians, Jews, Magians,
perhaps the residents of India, and, ultimately, the Muslims. It took both secular and religious
forms, but, most importantly for the present study, what it preserved for certain and not insig-
nicant segments of those increasingly monotheistic cultures was the concept that, for those

30
Berkey, The Formation of Islam, p. 5.
31
Peters, Harvest of Hellenism, p. 671.
32
This and what follows is a grossly oversimplied account of Gnosticism. For much more succinct and no doubt
clearer explanations of this late antique phenomenon, see Peters, Harvest of Hellenism, pp. 648–662 and Morony, Iraq
After the Muslim Conquest, specically the chapter there entitled “Pagans and Gnostics,” pp. 384–430.
33
Who is known by various names, depending on the religious community in question. For example, to the
Marcionites, he was the “Redeemer;” to the Sabians, the “First Cause.” See Morony, Iraq After the Muslim Conquest,
p. 402 ff.
34
Morony, Iraq After the Muslim Conquest, pp. 411, 413.
 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING 15

who knew the requisite techniques and languages, the lines of communication between the
divine and the material world worked in both directions and not exclusively for the prophets.
Those claiming to know of alternate ways of communicating with God and, most particularly,
knowledge of methods of exercising inuence over His actions, came to be revered by certain
segments of the several religious communities, although those claiming such abilities were gen-
erally scorned as frauds or reviled as pagans by the leaders of those same communities.
In the midst of all this was magic. “Magic,” a culturally burdened and rather infelicitous
term, is the word employed by those who have studied and written about the religious history
of late antiquity to describe philosophies and bodies of practice which were used, among other
things, to inuence those powers and forces which were thought to exist beyond the visible
world. According to some philosophies, these powers resided in the planets; for others, specic,
earth-bound geographic locations were thought to harbor supernatural beings. In either case,
the power those entities possessed could be drawn upon for good or ill by those who enjoyed a
special relationship with them, or by those who had discovered the means by which their pow-
ers could be harnessed to the will of their familiars.
The pre-Christian world had its share of oracles, seers, and diviners who professed the abil-
ity to communicate with deities and spirits. People who practiced this esoteric craft continued
to do so well into the early Islamic period. The existence of so-called sorcerers and magicians,
the challenges they presented to monotheism, and the manner in which they were dealt with,
are well chronicled in the contemporary accounts.35 The major religions all believed in the
existence of one kind of supernatural being or other—angels, demons, jinn36 and the like.
However, their existence, once acknowledged, constituted something of a problem for those
who professed a belief in a solitary, omnipotent divinity. This god was characterized by his
prophetic representatives as operating at a further remove from quotidian human affairs and as
being much more chary regarding His choice of earthly interlocutors than the pagan deities he
supplanted. Thus, claims to the ability to carry on intercourse with God came to be portrayed,
especially by Christian and Jewish clerics, as fraud, charlatanry, or worse, blasphemy. Those
who made such claims were accused of preying on the gullibility of the common folk, not to
mention being dangerous to the teachings of the particular faith in question. Increasingly,
the resort to such measures, smacking as they did of the “pagan” practices from which they
derived, came to be seen as anathema to acceptable monotheistic religious behavior.
In spite of this, there were apparently many people who had need of reassurance that they
could bring their personal concerns to the attention of the Almighty or, failing that, to His
lieutenants and, once having done so, to have their requests acted upon. If the desired satisfac-
tion was not to be found with the clergies of the monotheistic confessions, then people who, by
virtue of a popularly endowed sanctity or recognized success in obtaining divine—or at least
supernatural—assistance for others, would be addressed. The practitioners of such skills had a
variety of tools at their disposal: potions, invocations in secret languages, instruction in modes
of personal conduct that would gain favor with spirits—and the fashioning of amulets.

35
On this, see Morony, Iraq After the Muslim Conquest, pp. 416–417.
36
The jinn (pl. ajnÊn) (like the genie of Sindbad’s lamp) are creatures believed by some Muslims to be real; their
existence is attested in the QurxÊn. They are both male and female, good and bad, Muslim and non-Muslim. They
are capable of mischief as well as acts of benevolence toward humans. See D.B. MacDonald, “Djinn,” EI2, V. 2,
pp. 546–548.
16 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

Just as some Christians attended Jewish religious services, there were Christians and Jews
who attended worship having come directly from an amulet maker or soothsayer and who
apparently saw no theological contradiction in having done so. In his valuable study of Iraq in
the period immediately after the Islamic conquest, Michael Morony relates accounts of Nesto-
rian Christians who consulted sorcerers, sought amulets and made animal sacrices. Even
priests were involved on occasion, but not even their expulsion by church leaders seems to have
dimmed the ardor of those who felt the need to avail themselves of such solutions.37
Although the Jewish and Christian religious leadership had serious problems with practi-
tioners of ‘magic’ and tried to suppress them, they seem ultimately to have adopted the more
pragmatic approach of making room for some magic within their systems of belief. This was not
done without difculty, nor was such an approach universally approved, as one study on Jewish
mysticism in this period has shown.38 At least among Jews, there was a difference of opinion
with regard to the acceptable methods of soliciting spiritual assistance. Some held that divine
assistance was earned by strict observance of the commandments; others believed that help
could be obtained through prayer or by intoning the divine names.39
Faced with the widespread acceptance of these and similar practices among large segments
of their respective populations, the clerics of both the Christian and Jewish faiths seem to have
decided that it would be better to allow these practices, as long as certain rules were observed.
It was in this way that the use of ‘magic’ came to be, if not permitted, then at least tolerated
by the religious establishments, as long as it was wrought for good and not for evil and so long
as it relied on Holy Writ, the Holy Names, and Jewish or Christian symbols as the grammar of
its power. Thus it was that passages from the Torah and the Bible began to appear in written
amulets, where they were used to invoke the assistance of the divine to achieve specic ends for
the supplicants who requested them, although this practice, too, was controversial.40
Magic could be used to battle demons, evil spirits and the like—the existence of which
had already been acknowledged—particularly since they were commonly understood to be
the root causes not only of misfortune and danger, but of illnesses. The belief that illness was
an indication of a sick soul or evidence of the commission of a sin was congruent with the
idea that unseen forces or powers affected human activities; the equation of evil and illness
transcended confessional boundaries. The adjuration of divine (i.e. good) power by means of
‘magic’ to counter such forces was judged to be acceptable both theologically and philosophi-
cally by many elements of the three main monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and
Zoroastrianism.
Into the midst of this polyglot, religiously polymorphous milieu the Arab Muslims inserted
themselves, quickly becoming immersed in the debates and adopting many of the practices
of the indigenous populations. No doubt they already were aware of some of the issues being
bruited about by Jewish and Christian theologians. For instance, the QurxÊn contains a number
of allusions and references to religious differences between Jews and Christians. Moreover,
both Christians and Jews had been living among the Arabs for some time and Arab nomads
and traders were frequent visitors to the lands of the Byzantines and Persians. All these interac-

37
Morony, Iraq After the Muslim Conquest, pp. 416–418.
38
Rebecca Macy Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power: Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism,
(Harrisburg, PA, 1998), p. 51.
39
Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power, p. 51.
40
See Peter Schäfer and Shaul Shaked, eds., Magische Texte aus der Kairoer Geniza, v. 2, (Tübingen, 1997), p. 5.
 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING 17

tions certainly afforded the Arabs the opportunity to learn something about the nature of their
theological discussions, however imperfect and lacunary that understanding may have been.
As the Arabs moved in ever greater numbers into the settled areas of the former Byzan-
tine and Sasanian Empires, they were increasingly exposed to the syncretistic forces that had
been at play among the Christians, Jews, and the Zoroastrians, among the speakers of Greek,
Pahlavi, Aramaic, Kurdish and the other languages spoken in the region, and among the vari-
ous ethnic groups that spoke them. While they most certainly found many of the religious
and cultural practices they encountered strange—and many no doubt anathema to their own
religious beliefs—they were at the same time selective in the imposition of their own ways on
the indigenous peoples. A strong impulse toward practicality seems to have governed many
of these decisions. For example, the pre-Islamic political arrangement between Persians and
the Jewish and Christian communities in their midst, under which adherents of these religions
were granted political authority over the internal affairs of their groups, was continued after
the Arabs took political power in Sasanian Iran.41 This arrangement was eventually extended
throughout the Islamic realms and applied to Sabian and even Zoroastrian communities.
The willingness of the Muslim Arabs to adopt ideas and practices they encountered in
their expansive conquests of the former imperial realms of Byzantium and Sasanid Persia,
and beyond, extended to material matters also. Principles of Byzantine city planning and
architecture lent much to the development of cities founded by the Arabs and the mosques
they built therein. Greek science, especially in the areas of mathematics, astronomy, and medi-
cine formed the basis of numerous advances achieved by later Muslim scientists in these elds.
An early encounter between Arabs and the Chinese, perhaps the consequence of an armed
conict, resulted in the transfer to and enthusiastic adoption of papermaking technology by
the former.42 This process of selective adaptation commenced in the earliest stages of contact
between the Muslim Arabs and these other groups and continued long after the conquests had
been completed.43 Once begun, it seems, the habit of borrowing became just that. While the
most widely known evidence for Arab Muslim cultural borrowing lies in the corpus of Ara-
bic translations from Greek and Sanskrit, the cultural appropriation was much broader and
pervaded all aspects of life, from the crafts and ne arts to the mundane; from medicine and
literature to habits of dress and eating.
Not surprisingly, such borrowing was not limited to the practices of others; in many instances,
the Arab Muslims adapted their own pre-Islamic practices to post-Islamic realities. Justica-
tion for some of these adaptations was found in the QurxÊn; in other cases, customary usage
was recognized as a validating principle. In still other instances, the rationale for adopting a
specic belief or practice was found through resort to a previously borrowed concept or prac-
tice. One of the most noteworthy examples of this last case would be the employment, by early
Arab Muslims, of Greek logical and theological constructs to defend the precepts of their faith
against non-Muslim challenges to it and to develop their own Islamic theology.

41
Berkey, The Formation of Islam, p. 92.
42
Paper, a mid-eighth century importation from China, gave the Arabs a marvelous vehicle for disseminating
their sacred text, the QurxÊn, widely and at a relatively modest cost. Would the QurxÊn have been so widely distributed
in the medieval period had it not been for the availability of papermaking technology? Recall how reproduction of
the Bible (and other books) increased signicantly after paper and printing were introduced in Europe.
43
Berkey notes, for example, that as late as the Fatimid period in Egypt (10th century CE), Muslims were chant-
ing the QurxÊn in styles which imitated Christian chants. See The Formation of Islam, pp. 197–198.
18 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

The use of amulets, I would argue, falls into this nal category. Amulets were in wide use
among the pre-Islamic Arabs and, like those employed by pagans elsewhere, their function
was to gain the assistance of unseen forces to achieve certain desired outcomes over which
supplicants had no other kind of power. Their subsequent employment by monotheists—Jews
and Christians—continued a tradition of belief in their power that stretched back to the time
of the ancient Egyptians. Rooted in the widely held notion that unseen powers inuenced the
affairs of humanity and that those powers could, in turn, be inuenced by appropriate human
actions, the wearing of amulets appears to have been one of those socio-cultural behaviors that
transcended theologies and, in certain cases, even deed them.
For the Arabs, the idea that such powers existed and that some people could exert inu-
ence over them derived, in part, from the traditional belief, conrmed by the QurxÊn, of the
ubiquitous presence of the jinn, and in part on the Neoplatonic idea of a network of ‘sym-
pathies’ among all elements of the perceivable universe,44 which was adopted from late an-
tique Hellenistic thinkers. Neoplatonists also introduced the idea of theurgy, the adjuration of
divine power. Although not, strictly speaking, ‘magic,’ theurgy was understood to be a method
of harnessing divine powers in a way that was acceptable, in the view of some—but not to
Muslims.45
Muslims rejected the practice of theurgy apparently because it involved planetary powers,
something Islamic theology held to be anathema. However, Islam did ultimately accept the use
of ‘magic’ under rather strict conditions. Binding supernatural beings to human purposes was
permitted as long as the goal was not to bring harm; this validated the use of amulets so long as
they followed certain rules and incorporated specic religious formulae in their texts. This type
of magic, {ilm al-simÒyÊx,46 or ‘white magic’ was carried out, in Islam, by practitioners who were
regarded by members of the public as possessing the appropriate sanctity, skills, demeanor, and
perhaps lineage to do so.
Many of the people so recognized, in the Islamic period, were, like their predecessors of
other religious persuasions, people of local note, recognized for their exceptional piety and per-
sonal reputations. The pagans had their oracles; the Christians their saints and seers; the Jews
their kabbalists.47 It was to such people that some members of the public turned for assistance
in bending divine will to their purposes or to invoke the aid of various other unseen forces.
Islam produced its own strains of mystics. Some, like the earlier incarnations, received their
bona des through a sort of popular acclamation.48 Their ‘holiness’ was never acknowledged of-
cially by any organized religious body and their spheres of inuence tended to remain tightly
circumscribed. A few won repute from a wider audience and an even smaller number came
to be recognized as ‘saints’ by many, if not most, members of the Muslim community.49 It was

44
Touc Fahd, “La magie comme ‘source de la sagesse,’ d’après l’oeuvre d’al-Buni,” in Charmes et Sortilèges Magie
et Magiciens, Rika Gyselen, ed., (Bures-sur-Yvette, 2002), p. 62.
45
Jewish mysticism, particularly, employed this practice. See Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power, (Harrisburg,
1998), p. 56.
46
Touc Fahd, “La magie comme ‘source de la sagesse,’ ” pp. 62 & 63, and G.H.A. Juynboll, “Si˜r,” EI2, V. 9,
p. 569.
47
See Lesses’ study, Ritual Practices to Gain Power, on early Jewish mystical practices, already cited above.
48
A phenomenon which can be found yet today in many parts of the Islamic world. For a recent study of this,
see Helle Hinge, “Islamisk folkereligiøsitet,” Diwan 1 (1995), pp. 14–19.
49
Formal Islamic doctrine does not recognize “saints,” nor does it provide for the elevation of people to saint-
hood. Popular Islamic practice, however, has frequently conferred such status on select people and their tombs and
graves punctuate the Islamic landscape to this day. The resting places of many such people have become pilgrim-
 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING 19

to such people that those desirous of gaining supernatural assistance would turn for special
prayers and handwritten amulets that addressed their individual concerns.
Organized Islamic mysticism appears within two centuries of the establishment of Islam.50
Already in the mid-eighth century CE, organized groups of ÉÖfÒs —those who wear wool—are
found contemplating the nature of the individual’s relationship to Allah and devising means
to achieve spiritual unity with the Deity. The development of such abilities took many years of
study and devotion as well as indoctrination to secret knowledge, the gnosis that allowed one to
open the path to spiritual union. Signicantly, this training was predicated on the ability to read
and write, skills essentially lacking in the general population of the time. Sus, then, were also
people to whom one could turn to solicit divine aid. Since such aid often included the composi-
tion of protective amulets, Sus, possessing the requisite esoteric knowledge and the ability to
write, were the resource of rst resort when amulets were called for.
By no means must we think that acceptance or approval of the use of amulets was immedi-
ate or universal among the Muslim Arabs, however. According to Islamic lore, the Prophet
Muhammad himself had been a victim of enchantment and held sorcery to be an expression
of evil.51 While the QurxÊn itself is silent on the matter, codied ˜adÒth declare that sorcerers
were liable to be put to death for practicing their art.52 Over time, however, Islamic thinkers
reasoned that both good and bad magic existed and that only the practice of bad magic—that
used to bring about harm—was proscribed. The subject of magic was no small matter for the
medieval Muslims. Scholars of the caliber of Ibn KhaldÖn and al-GhazÊlÒ thought it worthy
of serious consideration and several centuries would pass before magical ‘work’ was acknowl-
edged to have a certain validity. Two works of al-BÖnÒ (d. 1225 CE), Shams al-Ma{Êrif al-Kubrá
and Miftʘ al-UÉÖl al-Æikma, went a long way toward establishing magic as a legitimate practice
by making a convincing case that the QurxÊn was its foundation, and its practitioners, sages.53
Yet despite such an imprimatur, the esoteric nature of magic and the secretive habits of
those who performed it meant that the entire enterprise perpetually trod on thin ice. Tolerance
of the practice of ‘white,’ or “natural” magic ({ilm al-simÒyÊx ) by Muslims was a very wary tol-
erance, always bounded by suspicion and scrutinized with a skeptical eye. Those familiar with
the arcane arts of acceptable magic, after all, were also privy to knowledge of its malevolent
applications. The essential difference between good and bad magic was the purpose to which
it was put. As Juynboll has succinctly stated it,
The practice of this [i.e. ‘natural’] magic is tolerated insofar as it causes no harm to others. But
when the magician inuences nature with the object of doing harm, he is exercising prohibited

age destinations for generations of penitents. On visitations to such shrines, see the article “ZiyÊra,” EI2, V. 11,
pp. 524–539, but particularly the rst section by J.W. Meri, “1. In the central and eastern Arab lands during the
pre-modern period.”
50
The literature on ÉÖsm is extensive. Classic expositions on the topic include works by Reynold A. Nicholson,
The Mystics of Islam, (London, 1966); J. Spencer Trimmingham, The Su Orders in Islam, (Oxford, 1971); and Julian
Baldick, Mystical Islam, (New York, 1989), along with innumerable articles in the periodical literature and chapters
in other works. See also B. Radtke, “TaÉawwuf: 1. Early development in the Arabic and Persian lands,” and W.C.
Chittick, “2. Ibn al-{ArabÒ and after in the Arabic and Persian lands and beyond,” EI2, V. 10, pp. 313–324 and the
sources cited there.
51
G.H.A. Juynboll, “Si˜r,” EI2, V. 9, p. 569.
52
G.H.A. Juynboll, “Si˜r,” EI2, V. 9, p. 569. ÆadÒth are the codied reports of the sayings and actions of Muham-
mad, based, according to Muslim belief, on rst-hand accounts of reliable witnesses to those utterances and events.
They constitute the second most important basis of Islamic law, after the QurxÊn.
53
Touc Fahd, “La magie comme ‘source de la sagesse,’ ” pp. 61–63.
20 THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

magic. This . . . implies recourse to demoniacal inspiration (black magic) and to the invocation of
the planets (theurgy). It is by the awareness of the causal mechanism which rules nature and by
penetrating the afnities which bind mankind and the cosmos closely together that the magician
attempts to inuence the course of natural events, harnessing the forces emanating from the causal-
ity and relativity which he establishes between beings. This is why the magician’s art is no business
for amateurs; an innate predisposition, rich and multifarious knowledge, and consummate skill in
handling composition, conjunction, mixture and combinations are indispensable. To obtain his
objective, the magician sets in motion two procedures aimed at constraining higher forces to place
their efcacy at his disposal.54
This, then, is a part of the cultural context within which we should place the study of amulets
in general and block printed amulets in particular. Amulets constitute the embodiment of the
‘magical’ practices outlined above. For those who believed in their efcacy, amulets served
as sources and reminders of protective or helpful powers harnessed for a specic personal
purpose. They were worn on one’s person so that the protective powers, the lines of cosmic
sympathy, would always be woven about their object. Depending upon the desired outcome,
the amulet was meant to protect the wearer from specic threats or dangers, or to assure the
successful achievement of a specied goal. Put differently, the wearing of an amulet drew a
veil of focused energy or power about the wearer; indeed, the Arabic term for amulets, ˜ijÊb,55
indicates just such a function.
Finally, the creation and use of amulets had long been a feature of popular religious practice
in the Near East. Their popularity transcended confessional, ethnic and linguistic boundaries
and their employment continued over time, despite periodic attempts by clerics of the vari-
ous religious establishments to control or even halt the practice. Like many other features of
the religious and social landscapes of the time, amulets were subject to powerful syncretistic
impulses that led to the development of amulets that were, if not acceptable to the several re-
ligious hierarchies, at least grudgingly tolerated as a necessary concession to those members of
the communities who did not view the wearing of an amulet to be a violation of the precepts
of their professed faith. More to the point, it is clear that Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism,
and, ultimately, Islam, created spaces for these prophylactic devices within their theologies. In
this context, block printed amulets comprise a subset of the much broader phenomenon of
amulets. With regard to their purpose, it is likely that both handwritten and block printed amu-
lets were created with the same ostensible intentions. What remains to be discovered is whether
the people who composed handwritten amulets also crafted the block printed variety.

54
G.H.A. Juynboll, “Si˜r,” EI2, V. 9, pp. 569–570.
55
J. Chelhod, “ÆidjÊb,” EI2, V. 3, p. 361.
 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

As a locus of cultural synthesis in the pre-modern era, the Middle East has few, if any equals.
The meeting and melding place of numerous societies over long spans of time, the region has
served as both crucible and conduit for a variety of inventions and innovations—intellectual
as well as material. One need only consider the numerous arenas of human thought to realize
that advancements in philosophy, mathematics, medicine, literature, music, art or religion can-
not properly be appreciated without giving careful consideration to their evolution in this part
of the world where, among many other endeavors, abundant archaeological evidence speaks
to continual—if occasionally erratic—advances in urban design and development, textiles,
architecture, engineering, ceramics and glass production.
Such synthetic processes seem to have been at work in the realm of printing as well, but
awareness of the role played in the development of this craft by medieval Arabic speakers—
and possibly its transmission to Europe—has long been limited to specialists in Arabic pale-
ography and historians of printing. Even among such specialists, evidence for the existence of
printing in the medieval Islamic world has long been treated either as—at best—an oddity, a
curiosity, or—at worst—as so unlikely a concept that alternate explanations had to be found
for the rare, puzzling textual references to it. Despite the existence of a considerable number
of allusions—some tantalizingly vague, others admittedly dubious—to the practice of printing
in the Arabic historical and literary record, no systematic investigations of the Arabic block-
printing phenomenon have materialized. The history of typography in the Middle East has
received much greater attention and such studies have overshadowed the more modest investi-
gations of earlier Middle Eastern printing techniques.1
Several Arabic texts written between the tenth and fourteenth centuries contain passages
which can be understood as referring to a process which, I would argue, is block printing. Per-
haps the earliest and certainly one of the more obscure and more suggestive passages of these
appears in the Fihrist, a bio-bibliographic work composed in Baghdad at the end of the tenth
century by Ibn al-NadÒm (d. 385/995 or 388/998) and constituting a catalog of books known
(by its author) to have been written in Arabic up to his time.2 In chapter (maqÊlah) eight, de-
voted to magicians and sorcerers, Ibn al-NadÒm relates that he received a report about certain

1
A brief bibliography of books and articles on Arabic typography in the modern period would include: Josée
Balagna, L’imprimerie arabe en occident (XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles), (Paris, 1984); Wahid Gdoura, Le Début de l’Imprimerie
Arabe à Istambul et en Syrie, Évolution de l’Environnement Culturel (1706–1787), (Tunis, 1985); Miroslav Krek, “The Enigma
of the First Arabic Book Printed from Moveable Type,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 38:3 (1979), pp. 203–212;
John A. Lane, R. Breugelmans & Jan Just Witkam, eds., The Arabic Type Specimen of Franciscus Raphelengius’s Plantinian
Printing Ofce (1595), (Leiden, 1997); P.J. Nasrallah, L’Imprimerie au Liban, (Beirut, 1948); and Hendrik D.L. Vervliet,
Cyrillic and Oriental Typography in Rome at the End of the Sixteenth Century, an inquiry into the later works of Robert Granjon,
(Berkeley, 1981). Most recently, there is Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès, Arabic Typography: a comprehensive sourcebook,
(London, 2001). An international symposium on printing in the Middle East was held in Mainz, Germany in 2002
as part of the First World Congress of Middle Eastern Studies. The proceedings, published under the title Sprachen
des Nahen Ostens und die Druckrevolution/Middle Eastern Languages and the Print Revolution, (Westhofen, 2002), also contains
useful articles on the history of Arabic printing and typography.
2
See J.W. Fück, “Ibn al-NadÒm,” EI2, Vol. 3, pp. 895–896.
22 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

magicians (sʘirÒn) in Egypt who had, among the tools of their trade, stamps (khawÊtim).3 Given
the lack of any meaningful description of them, the precise nature of these stamps cannot be
determined but in light of what we now know about medieval Arabic block printing, state-
ments such as Ibn al-NadÒm’s may warrant closer scrutiny by present-day scholars.
Roughly contemporary to Ibn al-NadÒm was Mis{ar ibn Muhalhil al-KhazrajÒ al-YanbÖ{Ò,
known as AbÖ Dulaf (. ca. 952 CE).4 A poet familiar with an amorphous community of petty
thieves, magicians, professional beggars and practitioners of the shady arts known collectively
as the BanÖ SÊsÊn, AbÖ Dulaf composed a panegyric poem on that group. The text of the
poem and a translation into English were published in a study of the BanÖ SÊsÊn by C.E.
Bosworth.5 In his ‘QaÉÒdah SÊsÊnÒyah,’ AbÖ Dulaf, too, alludes to the production of amulets
or charms that involves carving (˜ar) a matrix of some sort. He writes, “And of our number
is the one who engraves a pattern [¢arsh] for mass-producing amulets, without shaping them
individually and without smoothing them down.”6 These matrices—‘¢arshes’—were used to
create the amulets.
Again, however, AbÖ Dulaf does not reveal to us the precise nature of the ¢arshes,” and
Bosworth’s gloss on the phrase “˜Êr al-¢arsh” provides little clarication:
This is the person who hollows out moulds for making amulets, and then ignorant and illiterate
people buy them from him. The vendor has kept back the matrix with the pattern engraved in it,
and he then sells the amulets to the common people, letting them think that he has written them
out individually himself. This mould or pattern is called a¢-¢arsh.7
Bosworth apparently misconstrued AbÖ Dulaf ’s meaning altogether, explaining that the poet
was referring to the manufacture of an object—a charm, perhaps—something like a pendant
or a piece of jewelry with some design inscribed on it. Bosworth’s use of the terms “mould”
and “pattern” when referring to these amulets8 suggest that he had in mind designs rather than
texts. That he also refers in the same sentence to amulets written out does little to clarify the mat-
ter, although his reference to “illiterate” customers indicates that he thought of the amulets as
having textual features. However this may be, Bosworth makes no mention of that assumption
in his study of the BanÖ SÊsÊn.
Writing a little more than a decade after Bosworth, Richard Bulliet offers a re-evaluation of
the poem in question. Taking issue with Bosworth’s interpretation of the passage cited above,
he contends that the word ‘matrix’ (¢arsh) does not refer to some device for creating a “three-
dimensional object,”9 as Bosworth concludes, but rather to a printing block for mechanically
3
Ibn al-NadÒm, Mu˜ammad ibn Is˜aq, Fihrist li-Ibn al-NadÒm: dirÊsah biyÖjrÊfÒyah, bibliyÖghrÊfÒyah, bibliyÖmitrÒyah.
Wa-ta˜qÒq wa-nashr Sha{bÊn KhalÒfah, WalÒd Mu˜ammad al-{Awzah, (QÊhirah, 1960–), Vol. 1, p. 623.
4
On this gure, see V. Minorsky, “AbÖ Dulaf,” EI2, Vol. 1, p. 116 and R.W. Bulliet, “AbÖ Dolaf al-YanbÖ{Ò,”
Encyclopaedia Iranica, (London, 1982–), Vol. 1, pp. 271–272. For examinations of his relevant writings and his place
in the history of Arabic printing, see Richard W. Bulliet, “Medieval Arabic ¢arsh: a Forgotten Chapter in the History
of Arabic Printing,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 107 (1987), pp. 427–438. The passage is not unambiguous.
The text of the manuscript as transcribed in Hammer-Purgstall’s notice differs signicantly from that published by
C.E. Bosworth (See next note).
5
C.E. Bosworth has edited this and a later poem on the same topic in The Mediaeval Arabic Underworld: the BanÖ
SÊsÊn in Arabic Literature and Society, (Leiden, 1976). References here and elsewhere in this work to these two poems are
taken from Bosworth’s editions of them. See also Bosworth’s article “SÊsÊn” in EI2, Vol. 8, p. 70.
6
C.E. Bosworth, Mediaeval Islamic Underworld, pt. 2, p. 201. The translation is Bosworth’s.
7
C.E. Bosworth, Mediaeval Islamic Underworld, pt. 2, p. 201.
8
This line of reasoning has been proposed by Bulliet, “Medieval Arabic ¢arsh,” p. 430.
9
Bulliet, “Medieval Arabic ¢arsh,” p. 430. Strictly speaking, the paper text is a three-dimensional object and
Bosworth’s explanation, cited above, does little to dispel the confusion.
 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING 23

reproducing the text of an amulet.10 One possible explanation for this misunderstanding is that
Bosworth was unaware not only of the existence of Arab block printing but also of its potential
for shedding light on the passage in question.
Prior to the invention and widespread adoption of printing, texts were written by hand. A
person wanting to reproduce a text copied it (or had it copied) by hand from an existing manu-
script onto blank pages. Since there was little if any ‘quality control’ over this process, mistakes
often crept in, some of which resulted from a badly produced ‘master copy.’ In other cases,
the literary and calligraphic skills of the copyist—an ability to comprehend the material and
to render it accurately—were at fault. Whatever the case, the copyist would make an attempt
to understand the original meaning of a dubious passage and would insert into the new copy
a more or less educated guess as to what the original text was. Over the course of years and
centuries, these errors tended to be perpetuated and often compounded as successive copyists
recopied the text from a variety of master copies. As a consequence, multiple variants of an
original text came into being, some so corrupted as to be unintelligible. Examples of such tex-
tual variations are frequently encountered by scholars involved in the study of ancient writings
and are too numerous to mention. They present one of the most daunting challenges to the
literary scholarship of any pre-modern era or culture.
This, apparently, is what has occurred with AbÖ Dulaf ’s text. Moreover, in this particular
case, the obscurity of the passage is no doubt related—in some degree—to the fact that there
was little broad awareness of the existence of block printing among medieval Arab copyists,
and certainly even less among those of later ages when the craft seems to have fallen into
desuetude. One must also take into account the fact that AbÖ Dulaf ’s poem is replete with
the cant and jargon particular to the demi monde of tenth century Iraq and Persia. The exact
meanings of many of the words used by that group of people in that time have been lost and
cannot always be reconstructed with certainty. With no knowledge of block printing to guide
them, copyists were prone to misinterpret a passage referring to an activity they knew little or
nothing about and thus ran the risk of misrepresenting that activity in the copies of the texts
they were writing.
If AbÖ Dulaf ’s account of carving matrices were unique, one might assume the necessity for
nding an alternative explanation for the text in question. In other words, if there were only
one obscure or corrupted historical text in the entire Arabic corpus that contained a passage
that might be interpreted as referring to block printing, then solutions to the problematic word-
ing that ignored such a possibility could be entertained. However, additional puzzling refer-
ences have been encountered in Arabic writings of this and later periods. In fact, over the past
century and a half, scholars have noted several such references, in addition to those mentioned
above. This being the case, and in view of the incontrovertible evidence presented by the block
prints themselves, we must consider the possibility that such texts are, in fact, describing block
printing.
Within two centuries of AbÖ Dulaf ’s poem, two further references to block printing occur at
opposite ends of the Islamic realms. One passage quite unambiguously relates directly to one
of the more fascinating episodes in the history of Ilkhanid Persia.11 The Ál KhÊns, a dynasty
descended from the great Mongol KhÊn Chingiz (Genghis), established political control over

10
Bulliet, “Medieval Arabic ¢arsh,” p. 430.
11
On the Ilkhanid dynasty, see B. Spuler, “IlkhÊns,” EI2, Vol. 3, pp. 1120–1122.
24 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

Persia, Iraq and eastern Anatolia in the middle of the thirteenth century. In 1294 CE (693
AH), GaykhÊtÖ, the great-grandson of Chingiz, found his realm in severe nancial straits: due
to his and his predecessors’ excesses, and to his own lack of nancial acuity, the Persian state
treasury had been emptied. Consequently, not only was GaykhÊtÖ’s hold on the throne placed
in serious jeopardy, but GaykhÊtÖ had appointed as his vizier Âadr al-DÒn, who apparently
also had an unfortunate talent for nancial mismanagement.12 In an attempt to salvage the
realm’s crumbling economy, the two men decided to issue paper money in the form of scrip
called ch’ao, a term borrowed directly from the Chinese, who had been using paper money
since at least the thirteenth century. As head of the state chancellery, Âadr al-DÒn had the task
of producing and placing the paper money into circulation; in July 1294, in the city of Tabriz,
the use of metal coins and, indeed, precious metal in any form, was outlawed and this paper
currency was introduced in its place.
The signicance of this event for the present study is that Âadr al-DÒn’s paper currency was
printed; indeed, RashÒd al-DÒn’s account clearly speaks of an apparatus (ÊlÊt) used to produce
the currency.13 The value of each denomination was printed in the center of a rectangular
piece of paper; each bill had a decorative border of Chinese characters and bore the impres-
sion, in red ink, of the imperial seal as a sign of the currency’s authenticity.14 Although people
who refused to accept the paper money were threatened with execution, merchants and oth-
ers refused to employ the currency as a medium of exchange. In the face of both passive and
active resistance by the general populace, the government was forced, after a very short time,
to withdraw it. Not only did Âadr al-DÒn apparently pay for this failed scal experiment with
his life, but the paper money was so thoroughly eliminated from circulation that not a single
example is known to have survived.15
Knowledge of block printing among medieval Arabic speakers was not restricted to the
eastern Mediterranean, although, given the dates of the texts in which the putative allusions to
printing occur, one could argue that some time elapsed between its appearance in Egypt and
its manifestation in other parts of the medieval Islamic world. A treatise by one Ibn al-AbbÊr
(1199–1260),16 a historian and poet who served various rulers in Islamic Spain and North

12
For a detailed, and much more eloquent account of this event, see Karl Jahn, “Das Iranische Papiergeld: ein
Beitrag zur Kultur- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte IrÊn’s in der Mongolzeit,” Archiv Orientálni X (1938), pp. 308–340.
A revised English translation appears in the Journal of Asian History 4 (1970), pp. 101–135, under the title, “Paper
currency in Iran: A contribution to the cultural and economic history of Iran in the Mongol Period.” The origi-
nal article is supplemented by the appropriate passages in Farsi taken from the relevant historical works of VassÊf
(TaxrÒkh-i-VassÊf ) and RashÒd al-DÒn ( JÊmi{ al-TawÊrÒkh), two historians of the period. On VassÊf, see P. Jackson,
“WassÊf,” EI2, Vol. 11, p. 174; on RashÒd al-DÒn, see D.O. Morgan, “RashÒd al-DÒn ”abÒb,” EI2, Vol. 8, pp. 443–444
and the sources noted in the bibliographies of these two articles.
13
See Jahn, “Das iranische Papiergeld,” p. 328, note 1.
14
Jahn, “Paper currency in Iran,” pp. 126–127. The great seal was known as the “¹l.”
15
Jahn notes (“Paper currency in Iran,” p. 135) that not even the word “chxÊo” survives in Persian. Paper currency
had already been in use in China for some two centuries prior to this event and, from all accounts, it was quite
successful there. Marco Polo, perhaps most famously, mentions its broad circulation. For more details on Chinese
paper currency, see Thomas Francis Carter, The Invention of Printing in China and its Spread Westward. 2nd ed. Rev. by
L. Carrington Goodrich, (New York, 1955) and the sources cited there.
16
KitÊb al-Æulla al-SiyarÊx has appeared in several editions. It is a biographical work on poets. For further informa-
tion on the work and on its author, see M. Ben Cheneb, “Ibn al-AbbÊr,” EI2, Vol. 3, p. 673. I have consulted the
critical edition by Hussain Monés (2nd ed., Cairo, 1984) for the present work. The pertinent passage about printing
cited by Joseph Hammer-Purgstall in “Sur un passage curieux de l’Ihathet, sur l’art d’imprimer chez les Arabes en
Espagne,” ( Journal Asiatique, 4e. serie, tome 20, p. 255) is taken from the partial edition of the same work by R. Dozy,
Notices sur quelques manuscrits arabes, (Leiden, 1847–51).
 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING 25

Africa, alludes to printing activity. In al-Æulla al-SiyarÊx, under a biographical entry for one
Badr ibn A˜mad al-KhaÉÉÒ, the text states:17
He [al-KhaÉÉÒ] was a slave of the Emir {Abd AllÊh who manumitted him and put him in charge of
the royal lands. Then al-NÊÉir appointed him to the vizerate, the ofce of gatekeeper, the leadership
[council?=qiyÊdah], the horses and the posts. He was without equal in the provinces. The ofcial
edicts were written in his house. Then he sent them to be printed (lil-¢ab{). Once they were printed
they were returned to him and he sent them to the governors who executed them by his authority.
A little more than a century later, and near the eastern end of the Arab Islamic realms, yet
another possible reference to printing among the Arabs appears, written by ÂafÒ al-DÒn al-ÆillÒ
(1278–1348? CE). One of the most renowned Arab poets of the fourteenth century,18 his DÒwÊn
contains a seventy-ve line poem written in the argot of the BanÖ SÊsÊn (see above), one line
of which refers to the creation of amulets by carving or molding:19
And in making moulds for lead in casting amulets and charms (or: in making moulds from tin for
turning out amulets and charms?), how often has my hand written on the mould in the script of
Syriac and then that of phylactery-writing (sc. in Hebrew)!
Finally, what may be the most intriguing—yet tenuous—allusion to printing activity in the
medieval Islamic world occurs in the account of one {Abd al-Ra˜Òm al-JawbarÒ,20 a thirteenth
century dervish, alchemist and traveler who, like the two Iraqi poets introduced earlier, was
also familiar with the BanÖ SÊsÊn. Sometime between 1232 and 1248, at the behest of his pa-
tron, the ruler of an area in what is today southeastern Turkey, al-JawbarÒ recounted21 the vari-
ous ruses employed at that time by some of the shadier elements of society against the gullible
and unsuspecting. In this book, he relates a very intriguing episode which, while not explicitly
describing printing, points to a possible use of printing by one segment of the populace.
Al-Jawbar writes that he once encountered someone claiming to be an itinerant holy man.
Preaching on a street corner to a sizeable audience, this man proclaimed that he had a special
connection with Allah. To prove that he could intercede on behalf of his listeners and that
his intercession would be heard by Allah, he distributed to the assembly small pieces of paper
upon which was written in musk and rose water the most powerful name of Allah. He then
gathered up these pieces of paper and, holding them in his hands, he intoned a prayer over
them; then as he opened his palms, the pieces of paper rose skyward, bursting into ames.
This, said the holy man to the enthralled group, was proof that the prayers had found favor

17
Æulla al-SiyarÊx, v. 1, pp. 252–253. This edition lists al-KhaÉÉÒ under entry number 97. The translation given
here is mine. An alternate translation may be found in H.A. Avakian, “Islam and the Art of Printing,” in Uit Biblio-
theektuin en Informatieveld, (Utrecht, 1978), p. 259.
18
See W.P. Heinrichs, “ÂafÒ al-DÒn al-ÆillÒ,” EI2, Vol. 8, pp. 801–805. On the poem under discussion here, see
especially p. 803, col. 1.
19
This translation is from C.E. Bosworth, Mediaeval Islamic Underworld, pt. 2 p. 298, line 39. The Arabic text appears
on p. 49 of Part 2 of that work. The parentheses in the quote are Bosworth’s commentary. N.B. The abbreviation
‘sc.’ in parentheses, for those readers of the post- ibid., idem, op. cit. generation, means ‘to be permitted to know’
(Random House Unabridged Dictionary (2nd ed.)), a contraction—‘scilicet’—from Latin scire licet.
20
On al-JawbarÒ and his work, see S. Wild, “al-DjawbarÒ, {Abd al-Ra˜Òm,” EI2, Vol. 2, p. 250.
21
{Abd al-Rahman al-Djawbari, Le Voile Arrache: l-autre visage de l’Islam. v. II. Traduction integrale sur les manu-
scrits originaux par René R. Khawam, (Paris: Éditions Phebus, 1980). I have also consulted another edition of this
work: {Abd al-Ra˜Òm [sic] al-JawbarÒ, al-MuªtÊr f Kashf al-AsrÊr wa-Hatk al-AstÊr. Edited by {IÉÊm ShabÊrÖ, (Beirut,
1992).
26 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

with Allah. The people immediately rushed forward to purchase great numbers of the remain-
ing copies of the prayer.
Although the account differs slightly in the two versions of the text I have read,22 the point
I want to make here is that this seems to me to be a most appropriate occasion to use printed
texts. On the one hand, the production of large numbers of handwritten copies of talismans
seems to be too laborious an undertaking for something that was intended to be destroyed, at
least in part. On the other, mechanical reproduction of a large number of simple texts like the
ones described by al-JawbarÒ makes such an undertaking almost efcient, even by modern stan-
dards. Moreover, the fact that the story concerns a member of the BanÖ SÊsÊn, a group known
to be associated with block printing activity, makes such a conclusion very tempting.
The passages cited above do not, I am certain, constitute an exhaustive rehearsal of all the
medieval Arabic texts that allude to printing; indeed, they may very well refer to other activi-
ties as yet unidentied. However this may be, one conclusion seems unavoidable. Most of the
texts came to the attention of scholars in part because of their puzzling, obscure references
to an activity that appears to have been imperfectly understood by the people who copied the
manuscripts in which the passages appear. Taken at face value, it would be very difcult to
determine what the original texts were. Only by conducting a thorough comparative analysis
of each of the surviving works in question would it be possible to propose correct readings. In
the event, the strongest evidence arguing for an interpretation of these passages as referring
to block printing comes from outside the texts, from the small but not insignicant number of
block printed medieval Arabic amulets now residing in private and institutional collections in
this hemisphere and elsewhere. If one takes these amulets into account, then one must, at the
very least, reconsider the murky texts in their light.
The dawning of modern awareness about Arabic block printing came about quite gradually.
Until well into the nineteenth century, it was a widely acknowledged fact—in the West at any
rate—that printing with moveable type, or typography, was a European invention. The histori-
cal record was clear: the genealogy of the idea could be traced to its roots in Mainz, Germany
and the fruit of that idea was to be found in libraries, booksellers’ shops, homes, and churches
across the continent. Only after Europeans began to study the cultural production of other
areas of the world did they begin to develop an appreciation of those peoples’ contributions to
technical and scientic progress. The Chinese were among the rst to be recognized for their
invention of paper, gunpowder and the like. The role of the Islamic lands in the transmission
and development of these and other technologies took longer to be revealed, no doubt due—at
least in part—to the European perception of the Islamic world at that time as backward or, at
best, decadent.
Given the absence of knowledge in the rst half of the nineteenth century about medieval
printed Arabic artifacts, skepticism regarding the existence of printing among Arabs of that
time was understandable. However, in 1852, Joseph Hammer-Purgstall (1774–1856)23 wrote

22
Al-Djawbari, Le Voile Arrache, pp. 219–222. A slightly different account is found in the Beirut edition: al-JawbarÒ,
al-MuªtÊr f Kashf al-AsrÊr, pp. 142–143. The rst version has the papers rising into the air and bursting into ame;
the Beirut edition says only that they rose into the air until they were out of sight.
23
Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph, “Sur un passage curieux de l’Ithathet, sur l’art d’imprimer chez les Arabes en
Espagne,” Journal Asiatique 4. Serie, Tome 20 (Aout–Septembre 1852), pp. 252–255. Hammer-Purgstall is perhaps
best known as the translator of the Diwan of the Persian poet Haz used by Goethe (1812) in composing his
“Westöstlicher Diwan.” See “Hammer-Purgstall,” Der Grosse Brockhaus, vol. 5, (Wiesbaden, 1954), p. 255.
 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING 27

a brief note regarding passages from two Andalusian Arabic manuscripts, one from the thir-
teenth and one from the fourteenth centuries, which appear to allude to printing.24 Even tak-
ing into account some uncertainty about the reading of one particular word in the relevant
passage of al-I˜Ê¢ah, the later work, Hammer-Purgstall concludes from the available evidence
that some sort of printing in Arabic was being done in the medieval period. To underscore the
validity of such a conclusion, Hammer-Purgstall reproduces an impression from a wood block
bearing the name of the town of Almería and the date 750 AH (i.e. 1349–1350 CE).25 Judg-
ing from the text it bears, the stamp was the property of the city’s customs administration and
may have been used to mark goods brought into the market or to validate ofcial documents,
or perhaps both.
Another forty years then elapsed before the issue of Arab block printing was again treated
in the scholarly literature. This was apparently a sufcient span of time for block printing
to be considered once more a novelty. In 1890, Josef Karabacek (1845–1918), at that time
Director of the Hofbibliothek in Vienna, published an article based on his research into a
collection of Arabic and papyrus documents that had been assembled by the library over the
previous decade.26 While devoted primarily to a discussion of the importance of Egyptian
paper for what it revealed about the history of linen paper production, Karabacek includes a
substantial section about a block printed Arabic amulet he discovered among the contents of
the collection.
The rst shipment of papyri, paper documents, and fragments from Egypt arrived at the
Kaiserliche Königliche Österreichische Museum für Kunst und Industrie in Vienna in 1881.27
This and further consignments, arriving in Vienna at intervals over the next several years, were
made available to the museum by a Viennese merchant with business connections in Egypt.28
24
“Al-Æulla al-SiyarÊx ’’ by Mu˜ammad ibn {Abd AllÊh ibn al-AbbÊr (1199–1260), already discussed above, and
KitÊb al-I˜Ê¢ah f AkhbÊr arnÊ¢ah by Mu˜ammad ibn {Abd AllÊh Ibn al-›a¢Òb (1313–1374). Hammer-Purgstall (loc.
cit., p. 255), in what may be a typographical error, mistakenly identies the author of the rst work as Ibn al-AttÊr.
A. Geiss commits the same error of identication in his 1909 article (see below). R. Dozy had edited and published
a part of Æulla al-SiyarÊx in Notices sur quelques manuscrits arabes (Leiden, 1847–51) and it is this work to which Hammer-
Purgstall is referring.
25
The text reads: “”Êbi{ QaysarÒyat al-MarÒyah {Êm ªamsÒn wa-sab{mÒyah” [Transliteration mine]. Hammer-
Purgstall, Passage curieux, p. 254. Another possibility is that the stamp indicated receipt of payment of the city’s
impost or duty on goods.
26
“Neue Entdeckungen zur Geschichte des Papieres und Druckes,” Oesterreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient
11/12 (Nov.–Dec. 1890), pp. 161–170.
27
Today called the Museum für angewandte Kunst. The block prints are now housed in the Papyrussammlung
of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB). The material in the ÖNB collection came to Europe over a pe-
riod of time. Some of the material, according to Adolf Grohmann (Allgemeine Einführung in die arabischen Papyri nebst
Grundzügen der arabischen Diplomatik, Wien, 1924, p. 7), was already in Berlin in 1879. Other elements were purchased
with funds provided by Erzherzog Rainer (1827–1913), whose interest in and support of scientic inquiry won him
honorary membership in the Austrian Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1861 (see Mitteilungen aus der Papyrsussamm-
lung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek (Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer), Neue Serie, Folge 7, (Wien, 1962) which also bears
the monographic title Aus der Vorgeschichte der Papyrussammlung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek: Briefe Theodor Grafs,
Josef von Karabaceks, Erzherzog Rainers und anderer. Herbert Hunger, editor, (Vienna, 1962), p. 58, note 49). Hereinafter
cited as AVPÖN.
28
Otto Theodor Graf (1840–1903) was a merchant with business interests in Egypt. He also acted as a dealer in
antiquities, primarily textiles. As a result of these Egyptian contacts, he was able to purchase numerous examples
of ancient textiles, as well as documents and literary fragments in Greek, Coptic and Arabic, which he sent back to
R.R. von Eitelberger, the Director of the Österreichische Museum für Kunst und Industrie. For a detailed account
of the development of the collection, see Adolf Grohmann, Allgemeine Einführung in die arabischen Papyri nebst Grund-
zügen der arabischen Diplomatik, (Wien, 1924). Much of the history of the early development of the Papyrus collection
is also recorded in a series of letters exchanged between Graf, Karabacek, Rainer and others. A selection of these
letters has been published in the AVPÖN.
28 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

Karabacek, who had been studying the acquisitions since 1882, was given responsibility for the
Arabic materials in these shipments and his early interest in them focused on their value for a
better understanding of paper manufacture in the Arab world.29
Adolf Grohmann30 says that most of the Arabic paper and papyri in the collections came
from the excavation of “kÖm” (pl. kÒmÊn), or rubbish heaps, outside the villages of the Fayyum
and were unearthed by farmers who sought to exploit the nutrient-rich material of these mid-
dens as fertilizer for their elds. The medieval Arabic paper, which constituted the upper-
most (i.e. chronologically the most recent) layers of the kÖms, would have been the rst to be
unearthed. Some of the excavators may have been aware of the value being placed on old
documents by Europeans, who, in the nineteenth century, were wandering the Middle East
in sizeable numbers. The farmers may have sought to augment their agricultural incomes
through the sale of these items to interested Europeans.31
In 1883, Erzherzog Rainer provided funding for an endowment that allowed the Austrian
Museum for Art and Industry to house and catalogue the papyri.32 The material now had an
institutional home, as well as the resources necessary for its proper study and classication. In
January 1885, Karabacek presented a lecture on the Fayyum paper in the Oriental Museum
in Vienna and, over the course of the next ve years, he published a series of articles on his
observations.33 At some point, now impossible to determine with any precision, Karabacek
noticed that several of the items appeared to bear printed text. Closer examination conrmed
this suspicion. In an 1890 article, his excitement at this discovery is evident, yet he also sounds
somewhat chagrined that the import of his discovery is lost on many people, particularly the
French and the Americans, who totally misapprehended the event.34 No doubt due to the

29
Adolf Grohmann, in his Allgemeine Einführung, presents a highly detailed account of Karabacek’s work on the
Arabic materials in what came to be known as the Erzherzog Rainer Collection. See pages 5–14 especially, and the
extensive annotations thereto.
30
Adolf Grohmann, From the World of Arabic Papyri, (Cairo, 1952), p. 8.
31
In an earlier publication on Arabic block printing (“The Scheide Tarsh,” Princeton University Library Chronicle
(Spring 1995)), I stated that many of these artifacts were brought to light as a result of archaeological work carried
out in Egypt. This statement was in error. I misinterpreted Thomas F. Carter’s (Invention of Printing, p. 176) assertion
to wit:
About the year 1880 excavations in the region of El-Fayyum in Egypt, near the ruins of the ancient city of
Crocodilopolis or Arsinoë, brought to light great masses of documents. Whether they belonged to refuse heaps
or to archives of an earlier age does not seem to be altogether clear. From this nd more than a hundred thou-
sand sheets and fragments of papyrus, parchment, and paper have been brought to Vienna and now constitute
the Erzherzog Rainer Collection in the Austrian National Library.
to refer to an archaeological excavation when, in fact, this was not the case, as Carter’s recounting of the events
shows.
32
See AVPÖN, p. 54 ff. The term “papyri” is used in this section to refer to the documentary material obtained
by the museum through the ofces of Herr Graf. However, both papyrus and paper artifacts were included in the
shipments. Today, the Austrian National Library, the present owner of the collection, houses these materials in a
unit called the “Papyrussammlung,” although both paper and papyrus artifacts are to be found there. In this section
of the chapter, the term “papyri” is used to refer to both paper and papyrus objects, reecting the generic usage
employed by the early writers surveyed here.
33
Cited in Julius Wiesner, “Mikroskopische Untersuchung der Papiere von el-Faijum,” Oesterreichische Monatschrift
für den Orient 9 (Sept. 1886), p. 159, note 1. According to Wiesner, Karabacek’s rst article appeared in the Monats-
schrift in 1885. Karabacek wrote another three articles on the importance of the Fayyum paper for the history
of papermaking: “Das arabische Papier,” Mittheilungen aus der Sammlung der Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer 2/3 (1887), pp.
87–178; “Neue Quellen zur Papiergeschichte,” Mittheilungen aus der Sammlung der Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer 4 (1888),
pp. 75–122; and “Neue Entdeckungen sur Geschichte des Papieres und Druckes,” Oesterreichische Monatsschrift für den
Orient 11/12 (Nov.–Dec. 1890), pp. 161–176.
34
Karabacek, “Neue Entedckungen,” pp. 167–168. Some French and American journals apparently had gar-
bled the news of Karabacek’s ndings and were reporting that what had been discovered were examples of printing
 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING 29

implications of this discovery for printing history, nineteen examples of block printing were
included in the 1894 exhibition of paper artifacts mounted at Vienna’s Austrian Museum of
Art and Industry.35 Karabacek wrote the section describing them, and it is he to whom credit is
given for uncovering this incontrovertible evidence that medieval Arabs were engaged in block
printing.
In 1886, the papyrus collection had been moved to the apartment of the founder and re-
cently deceased director of the Museum, Rudolf R. von Eitelberger (1817–1885).36 This site,
on one of the upper oors of the museum building, was employed as a repository, conservation
laboratory and study center for the papers. In the early 1890’s, the rooms were renovated and
re-decorated in preparation for the 1894 exhibition. A representative sample of about one
thousand documents was selected for display in glass-covered cases arranged throughout the
apartment’s six rooms.37 A catalogue was compiled and printed and, on February 16th of that
year, the exhibition opened its doors. For the rst time in ve centuries, Arabic block printing
was on display. The catalogue descriptions of the block prints extend to a mere four pages
(247–250), including one plate depicting item number 946 (now A.Ch. 12.150). Seventeen
of the pieces (929–945) are described collectively under a single heading; the remaining two,
numbers 946 and 948, are given separate entries and contain both detailed technical descrip-
tions and German translations of the texts.
Whatever potential benet this treatment and this exposure might have had for broader,
deeper studies of medieval Arabic block printing, that promise appears to have been stillborn.
While Karabacek provides a practical model for descriptions of both physical object and text,
and perhaps even for investigations into the social location of the amulets, such a project has

done with moveable type on papyrus and dating to the time of the Pharaohs! It is interesting to note that mention of
the block printed materials appears some eight years after his work on the Fayyum paper began, reecting his more
immediate interest in the papyrological aspects of the collection.
35
See Vienna. Austrian National Library. Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer. Führer durch die Ausstellung, (Wien, 1894), pp.
247–250. See also, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse. Denk-
schriften, 94. Band, I. Abhandlung, (Forschungen zur Islamischen Philologie und Kulturgeschichte, Band I), Adolf Grohmann,
“Arabische Paläographie, 1. Teil,” (Wien, 1967). Plate XVI: 1 is a photograph of PERF 946 (= A.Ch. 12.150, the
current accession number), apparently an accession number of the same vintage as those assigned to the pieces in
the exhibition). I have been able to correlate most of the identifying numbers given in the Führer with the current
numbers. See the handlist at the end of this volume for a list of them and references to other publications in which
they may be found.
The problem of determining the exact number of Arabic block prints held by the Papyrussammlung of the ÖNB
has yet to be resolved. I have slides of twenty-one Arabic block prints from the Papyrussammlung, so the “nineteen”
of Karabacek’s Führer obviously refers to a selection from the total number of Arabic block prints known to exist
in the collection. That there were more than nineteen block prints is indicated by Karabacek himself in his 1890
article (“Neue Entdeckungen zur Geschichte des Papieres und Druckes”) in the Oesterreichische Monatsschrift für den
Orient (11/12, Nov.–Dec. 1890) where he states (p. 167) that there were no fewer than thirty-two Arabic block prints
in the collection. This same number is given in a letter from Karabacek to Erzherzog Rainer, dated July 26, 1890,
in which the author makes mention of thirty-two “Drucke.” Although the letter concerns the purchase of some
Hebrew texts, it is clear from the context that the comment refers to Arabic materials already in the collection.
(AVPÖN, p. 95, letter no. 68: “Karabacek an Erzherzog Rainer.”) T.F. Carter, in his The Invention of Printing in China
and its Spread Westward (2nd ed., New York, 1955, p. 176), states that “. . . the collection contains some fty fragments
of block printing . . .” M. Krek (“Arabic Block Printing as the Precursor of Printing in Europe,” ARCE Newsletter
129 (1985)) avers that Karabacek discovered “two dozen” (p. 12) block prints among the thousands of documents
comprising the Rainer Collection. Later in the same article (p. 16, note 1) he says that he found six block prints
“among six thousand uncatalogued manuscript scraps . . .” It is quite possible, therefore, that undiscovered examples
exist in the collection.
36
A. Grohman, Allgemeine Einführung, p. 6. This “Dienstwohnung” was apparently one of the perquisites of the
directorship.
37
Grohmann, Allgemeine Einführung, p. 6.
30 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

not, until now, been undertaken. What impression those artifacts in the Viennese exhibition
had on their viewers is difcult to ascertain. Did the amulets draw about their display cases a
disbelieving crush of people murmuring in amazement, or were they passed over, their signi-
cance discounted because they lacked the impressive scale or visual magnicence of some of
the other items on display? Maybe their impact was diminished by the sheer number of items
in the exhibition, or perhaps they were regarded, as the earlier discoveries of Arabic block
prints seem to have been, as curiosities, briey noted and soon forgotten. Most certainly, a four-
page treatment in a three hundred-page volume did little to emphasize the cultural or historical
importance of the block prints. What is fairly apparent from subsequent writings about Arabic
block printing is that any broad awareness of its existence, if it ever came into being as a result
of the exhibition, evaporated rather quickly.
In all fairness to Karabacek, the block prints were not the primary focus of his interest.
Throughout his publications on the Rainer collection, as his introduction to the 1894 exhi-
bition catalogue particularly makes clear,38 he saw the collection’s vast trove of papyrus and
paper samples, whose manufacture spanned some 2700 years, to be an unmatched resource for
the study of papyrus and papermaking in Egypt. While the texts that the papers bore were of
great importance in many instances, he was interested primarily in the medium; the messages
he was content to leave to specialists in those areas. Perhaps for all these reasons, as well as oth-
ers, scholarly interest in the block prints seems to have faded even before it sparked.
In 1907 and 1908, nearly three decades after the Vienna exhibition, the Bulletin de l’Institut
Égyptien published a pair of articles by Albert Geiss on the history of printing in Egypt.39 These
pieces trace the arrival in Egypt in 1798 of two Frenchmen, Jean-Joseph Marcel and Joseph-
Emmanuel Marc Aurel, both members of the famous Commission Scientique which accom-
panied Napoleon’s army on its ill-starred “Expédition d’Égypte.” Messrs. Aurel and Marcel
were responsible for setting up a printing operation whose purpose was to produce journals in
which the reports and discoveries of the French scientists would be published. In addition, the
printers would provide the army with posters, broadsides, proclamations and the like in both
French and Arabic. Geiss contends that this activity led to the foundation of the Arabic print-
ing enterprise in Egypt, in particular the National Press of Egypt.
What is immediately obvious to a reader of these two articles is the author’s focus on the
practice of printing with moveable type, the invention of which he attributes to Johannes
Gutenberg (ca. 1400–1468). Given this narrow view of the concept of printing, it is perhaps
acceptable to argue, as Geiss does, that the two French citizens are “. . . the rst pioneers of
printing in the land of the Pharaohs.”40 There is, indeed, no evidence that printing with move-
able type was being done in Egypt before the French arrived at the end of the eighteenth
century and Geiss is probably justied in claiming that the French were responsible for the
introduction of typography to that country. However, if one denes printing as the mechanical
reproduction of text by whatever means, then such a statement is rather misleading. Certainly
what the medieval Arabs were engaged in with block printing was the reproduction of texts

38
Karabacek, Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer. Führer durch die Ausstellung, pp. xii–xxiii.
39
Albert Geiss, “Histoire de l’imprimerie en Égypte,” Bulletin de l’Institut Égyptien 5th ser.: 1 (1907), pp. 133–157;
“Histoire de l’imprimerie en Égypte,” Bulletin de l’Institut Égyptien 5th ser.: 2 (1908), pp. 195–220. I have already re-
ferred to Geiss’s articles in the introduction (see pp. 4–5).
40
Geiss, “Histoire de l’imprimerie en Égypte,” (1907), p. 134: “Deux Français . . . se partagent l’honneur d’avoir
été les premiers pionniers de l’Imprimerie au pays des Pharaons.” Translation mine.
 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING 31

through a mechanical process, a technology in which typography—the reproduction of text

using moveable type—was only a later step in printing’s evolution. In any case, the impression
one is left with after reading Geiss’s treatise is that no other method of printing existed in Egypt
prior to the arrival of the French army at the end of the eighteenth century. As the block prints
discovered in the Fayyum and elsewhere in Egypt make obvious, this was not the case.
In 1909, Federico Bonola Bey,41 writing in the same journal as Geiss on the origins of Ara-
bic printing in Europe,42 mentions in passing that his friend Bernhard Moritz, Director of the
Bibliothèque Khédiviale,43 has told him that within the collections of that institution are six
amuletic “planchettes” dating to the Fatimid period. These objects, he says, are not only rare,
but also constitute evidence of an activity conducted by Arabs that, for a very long time, was
thought to have been a European art.44 Again, however, the main focus of the article is directed
elsewhere, namely on the early history of printing Arabic characters with moveable type in
Europe. The existence of some sort of printing activity in the pre-modern lands of the Middle
East is accorded a perfunctory glance and the matter is then, once again, dropped. Why this
should be is unclear, but one has the impression that the matter is closely tied to the perception
of Arab civilization at that time as technologically primitive. Although such a sentiment may
not have been widely held, it certainly seems to have had an impact on research in the eld.
In a brief notice45 appearing directly after the article by Bonola Bey, Messr. Geiss picks up on
the mention of the six “planchettes.” He recalls the 1852 Journal Asiatique article by Hammer-
Purgstall that discussed certain textual and artefactual evidence of block printing in Islamic
Spain. However, rather than adducing Hammer-Purgstall’s ndings to support Bonola Bey’s
account of additional proof of printing activity among the Arabs, Geiss seeks to discount it by
taking issue with Bonola Bey’s translation of the Arabic word “¢aba{a” as meaning “to print.”
Arguing that the word also can mean “to impress,” he asserts that this latter denition offers a
much more appropriate understanding of the word, given that the printing block in question
was used to mark textiles.
There is no indication in the original article, nor in the Arabic text discussed there, that such
a conclusion is warranted. In fact, the word ‘book’ (Ar. kitÊb) is specically used in conjunction
with the word for printing. But for Messr. Geiss, who further suggests that the Arabic text in
which the reference to printing is found (al-I˜Ê¢ah) was “probably” speculative rather than
descriptive, this point is moot. In any case, he says, it is impossible for the Arabs, even those
in Spain, to have known of Gutenberg’s invention.46 But this is really beside the point. The

41
Federico Bonola (b. 1839) was an Italian geographer and author. He served as secretary general of the Khe-
dival Geographical Society in Egypt in the 1890s and was instrumental in founding the Ethnographic Museum in
Cairo (1894). See “Bonola (Federico),” Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada Europeo-Americana, tome IX, (Madrid, [1935]),
p. 42.
42
F. Bonola Bey, “Note sur l’Origine de l’Imprimerie Arabe en Europe,” Bulletin de l’Institut Égyptien 5:3 (1909),
pp. 74–80.
43
Today known as the DÊr al-Kutub. See www.darelkotob.org/ENGLISH/HTM/LIBRARY/PAPYRES.
HTM. On Bernhard Moritz, see “Moritz (Bernardo),” Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada Europeo-Americana, tome
XXXVI, (Madrid, [1935]), p. 1112.
44
F. Bonola Bey, “Histoire de l’imprimerie,” p. 77. “Ce sont de priers, des talismanes trouvés dans des objets ap-
partenant à cette période de l’histoire arabe. Deux d’entre’eux sont parfaitement conserves, les autres plus ou moins
abîmes. Je vous invite à aller les voir, car on regarde toujours avec emotion les reliques très rares d’un art que nous
croyions, à une époque si lointaine, réservé à la civilization européene.”
45
A. Geiss, “Observations de M. Geiss a la suite de la note de M. Bonola Bey,” Bulletin de l’Institut égyptien 5:3
(1909), pp. 81–84.
46
“De tout ceci il appert, à mon humble avis, que le passage de l’Ihathet ‘et c’est un livre par son contenu’
32 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

question is not whether the Arabs knew of moveable type printing during Gutenberg’s lifetime,
but rather whether they were block printing texts before Gutenberg. Geiss’s incredulity notwith-
standing, the evidence for that activity was mounting, however slowly.
Another fteen years would pass before the subject of Arabic block printing would again
be addressed in the scholarly literature. The gauntlet was taken up in the 1920s by two schol-
ars—one European, one American—who signicantly advanced scholarship on Arabic block
printing. Thomas Francis Carter was the rst modern scholar to undertake an extensive inves-
tigation into the historical and cultural connections between printing in Asia and Europe. A
graduate of Princeton University and Union Theological Seminary, Carter was, at the time of
his death in 1925, head of the Chinese Department of Columbia University.47 He had spent
a dozen years in China as a missionary and educator and it was during this sojourn that he
learned uent Chinese, at the same time developing a keen interest in Chinese history and
culture.48 But it was a leisurely tour through Europe on his way home that provided him with a
more precise intellectual focus. Stopping in Munich, he met with Friedrich Hirth (1845–1927),
who also had taught Chinese at Columbia and had recently retired. Hirth apparently sensed in
Carter the qualities required of someone who could pursue the study of the history of print-
ing fruitfully. According to Dagny Carter, Thomas’s wife, Hirth felt that Carter possessed “the
languages needed for the research and the patience and ability to put the scattered pieces of
evidence together in a coherent account.”49
At the retired professor’s suggestion, Carter delayed his planned return to the United States
and spent several months in Berlin so that he might confer with scholars in related elds. He
also was given permission to study pertinent archaeological materials recently discovered in
Turkestan and brought to Germany. He then visited with several renowned Asian and Mid-
dle Eastern scholars of the day, including Paul Pelliot (1878–1945), Bernhard Moritz (1859–
1939),50 and—most important for the present study—Adolf Grohmann (1886–1977). Carter’s
meetings with these and other scholars, and the access to scholarly and historical materials that
they were able to provide to him, set him on the course of research that resulted in the publica-
tion of his landmark book on printing history.
In an article which sought to trace the progress of printing technology across Asia from
its birthplace in China, Carter51 sketched a broader history of printing technology in which
he makes a major contribution to our understanding of the evolution of that technology by
expanding the denition of printing to include methods other than moveable type and by

devait probablement se rapporter à un de ces livres traitant, par les formulas plus ou moins cabalistiques, de l’art
d’imprimer, tel que nous l’avons souvent vu pour les livres d’alchemie avec leurs recettes fantaisistes pour la recher-
ché de la pierre philosophale.” A. Geiss, “Observations,” pp. 83–84. Geiss’s tone throughout this article strikes me
as supercilious and patronizing and, to my mind, belies a certain cultural insecurity about the history of Europe’s
(or at least France’s) role in printing technology. See the introduction to the present work, p. 5.
47
“Prof. T.F. Carter Dies,” New York Times (August 7, 1925), 15:7.
48
The engaging account of Prof. Carter’s scholarly awakening is recounted by his widow, Dagny Carter, in her
introduction to the second edition of the late professor’s classic work, The Invention of Printing in China and Its Spread
Westward, (New York: Ronald Press, 1955), pp. xix–xxiv. The synopsis presented in the following paragraphs is based
on her recollections.
49
Invention of Printing, p. xxi.
50
On Moritz, see note 43 above.
51
Thomas F. Carter, “The Westward Movement of the Art of Printing: Turkestan, Persia, and Egypt as Mile-
stones in the Long Migration from China to Europe,” Yearbook of Oriental Art and Culture, 1924–1925, (London, 1925),
pp. 19–28 (and 10 images on 5 plates).
 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING 33

positing links between that method and others. Written in the year prior to the publication of
his book, The Invention of Printing in China and Its Spread Westward,52 Carter’s article places Arabic
block printing in the context of what was then known about block printing in China and west-
ern Asia. He assembles archaeological evidence of Chinese and Central Asian block printing
gathered by such notables as Paul Pelliot and Aurel Stein, and considers this in conjunction
with the literary-historical reports of paper money being printed in thirteenth century Persia53
and the relevant evidence contained in collections of Egyptian Arabic block prints in Berlin,
Heidelberg and Vienna. Carter is the rst to assert that there is a direct connection between
Chinese and Arabic block printing, based on his examination of those artifacts:54
. . . [T]here can be no doubt that these Egyptian block prints show distinct Chinese inuence. They
are made like the Chinese block prints, not by pressure, but by the use of the brush; the ink too
is the same as that of China and Turkestan. Furthermore, like the earliest prints of China, they
consist altogether of charms and of excerpts from religious literature.
The technical and textual similarities Carter saw in both the Chinese and Arabic block prints
make a strong case for the argument that the Arabs acquired their knowledge of block printing
from China. While no conclusive proof has yet been found to support this contention, Carter’s
familiarity with the history of Chinese printing, his rst-hand examination of many of the
Arabic block prints found in European libraries and museums and his consultations with a
number of the leading authorities of his day lend weight to his conclusion.
By expanding his investigation to ll the broader canvas of printing evolution across a thou-
sand years and several thousand miles, Carter’s landmark study presents a more thorough
study of the history of printing. Beginning with a review of what was then known about the
invention of paper, he discusses the use of seals to make impressions of texts and images in soft
surfaces, a process known to have existed in third century BCE China,55 as well as the evolu-
tion of that technology into block printing and, eventually, typography. He follows this with an
account of how block printing might have been transferred to the Islamic realms, drawing on
an impressive array of historical and archaeological sources to make his case. Again, as with
his earlier article, Carter’s narrative is augmented by the inclusion of an example of Arabic
block printing, this time from the Rainer Collection in Vienna.56 Juxtaposed with a letter writ-
ten in 1289 from the ruler of Persia to Philip of France and bearing the block printed mark
of the Great Seal of Kublai Khan, the image is clearly intended to connect the two objects in
viewers’ minds.
The second scholar to focus a sharper lens on Arabic block printing was Adolf Grohmann,
in 1929.57 That era’s pre-eminent authority on Arabic paleography, Grohmann’s interest in

52
Thomas Francis Carter, The Invention of Printing in China and Its Spread Westward, (New York, 1925); 2nd edition,
revised by L. Carrington Goodrich, (New York, 1955). Unless otherwise noted, all references herein are to the sec-
ond edition. Carter died at age forty-three, shortly after the rst copies of the book rolled off the press.
53
See above, pp. 23–24.
54
Carter, “Westward Movement,” p. 25. Appended to Carter’s article is a plate (18B) showing a block printed
Arabic amulet from the collections of the Ägyptologisches Museum zu Berlin (Berlin Egyptological Museum) in
Charlottenburg. No. P11970. The amulet is reproduced below in the plates.
55
Invention of Printing, p. 11 ff. Of course, the technology was in use much earlier as attested by the well-known
Egyptian cylinder seals which date to Pharaonic times.
56
Verso of plate following page 168. Carter gives the old accession number-946—used in Karabacek’s Guide to
the Exhibition (Führer durch die Ausstellung). The item currently bears the number A.Ch. 12.150.
57
Grohmann’s Allgemeine Einführung in die arabischen Papyri nebst Grundzügen der arabischen Diplomatik, (Vienna, 1924),
34 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING

the history and development of Arabic scripts led him to a study of the small number of block
printed amulets then known to exist in Europe and Egypt. Although that study is only a small
segment of a much broader treatment of the history of the book in Islamic culture,58 it is note-
worthy for being the rst scholarly effort to understand the role that block printing played in
the history of Arabic printed texts. Grohmann’s observations are primarily concerned with the
oral and geometric designs that are frequently found on block printed amulets. These designs
usually serve to frame—or to separate sections of—the text printed on them. In at least one in-
stance (A.Ch. 7265 in the Austrian National Library), only the designs on the amulet are block
printed; the text is handwritten. Grohmann sees similarities between the block printed designs
on the amulets and the decorative carvings on Muslim grave markers, suggesting that they
derive from a common artistic grammar.59 At the same time, he notes that the use of designs to
embellish texts having a religious or quasi-religious purpose is a phenomenon encountered in
Christian manuscript texts of the same era. The possibility of cross-cultural inuences in the
fabrication of the block printed amulets must therefore, he believes, also be considered.
With regard to amulets as a cultural phenomenon, it is important to note, if only briey, that
such objects, popularly believed to provide to their owners with a prophylactic effect against a
variety of real and imaginary dangers, had long been a feature of life in the Middle East (as
they have long been elsewhere). The ancient Egyptians left an assortment of objects thought
to impart such protection. Ceramic scarabs and the ankh, the crucix with the distinctive loop
at the top, are just two of the most recognizable examples. The Jews created, used and appar-
ently dealt in protective amulets. Many of these are comprised of passages from sacred texts
engraved on metal.60 Coptic Christian Egyptians are known to have composed textual amulets
as early as the second century CE and their work incorporates many of the elements of neigh-
boring cultures.61 That the Muslim Arabs were aware of amulets and that many of them came
to believe in their efcacy can be taken as a given. That they adopted the practice of creating
their own amulets, incorporating elements of their own system of beliefs, is borne out by the
material evidence of that culture.
Most important for the study of medieval Arabic block printing is Grohmann’s observation
that the style of script used in the printing blocks can be used to date the texts generated by
them. The development of Arabic scripts over the centuries and across geographical space
has been traced with considerable precision by Grohmann and other scholars. The use of a
specic style of handwriting in a dated manuscript or on a building whose time of construc-
tion is known provides a reliable benchmark for determining when that particular script was
in use. For example, since the Ku script is known to have been used widely in monumental

pp. 4–14, gives the clearest and most detailed account of the acquisition and disposition of the materials acquired
by the Austrians in Egypt.
58
Thomas W. Arnold and Adolf Grohmann, The Islamic Book: a contribution to its art and history from the VII–XVII
century, (Paris, 1929). Hereinafter referred to as “Arnold & Grohmann.” The discussion of the role of block printing
is found on pages 27–29; examples of Arabic block printing appear on plates 13–15.
59
Arnold & Grohmann, p. 29.
60
On this, see Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity,
( Jerusalem, 1985), p. 13 ff., as well as their subsequent work, Magic Spells and Formulae: Aramaic Incantations of Late
Antiquity, ( Jerusalem, 1993). A study of the texts of Hebrew amulets is found in Theodore Schrire, Hebrew Magic
Amulets: Their Decipherment and Interpretation, (New York, 1966).
61
Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power, Marvin W. Meyer and Richard Smith, eds., (Princeton,
1999).
 THE (RE)DISCOVERY OF ARABIC BLOCK PRINTING 35

architecture in the ninth and tenth centuries CE,62 it is reasonable to conclude that block
prints bearing this script were also produced at about that time. Knowledge of the script styles
represented on the block prints is crucial since there is, at present, no other reliable method of
dating them.
As should be clear from the foregoing discussion, evidence for the existence of block printing
in the medieval Arabic-speaking world was clearly established by the end of the third decade
of the twentieth century. Moreover, dissemination of this knowledge had progressed consider-
ably since Karabacek’s discovery and subsequent publication of the rst block printed amulet.
Further proof of medieval Muslim involvement in block printing was proffered in 1938 when
Karl Jahn published his article on Iranian paper currency, to which reference has already been
made.63 Jahn’s article, which recounts the attempted introduction of paper currency into the
late thirteenth century economy of Tabriz in present-day Iran, also makes the point that the
paper money was block printed.64 Thus, even for those historians who may have been ignorant
of the existence of the block printed amulets, there was ample proof of the use of rudimentary
printing technology in the Middle East long before it appeared in Europe.
Yet despite the number of publications either specically devoted to medieval Arabic block
printing or alluding to its existence as a part of related studies, the topic still had not been ad-
dressed in depth. Following Grohmann’s and Jahn’s studies, interest in the block prints seems
to have receded to earlier levels. It remained there with only occasional upward ticks in the
succeeding decades. While articles on block printing have continued to appear (and indeed one
could comfortably argue that the pace of publication about individual pieces has even acceler-
ated recently), they have not, perhaps in spite of their authors’ intentions, generated the critical
mass of curiosity necessary to produce a major study.
Such a fragmented approach denies us the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of
the phenomenon. When considered collectively, these studies unquestionably contribute to a
better appreciation of Arabic medieval block printing. Reports by such scholars as Giorgio
Levi della Vida, who published a fragmentary block printed amulet from the University of
Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology65 in 1944, and Bishr Fares’ brief
1957 notice of an interesting fragmentary block print bearing, in addition to a qurxÊnic pas-
sage, the printed image of a fantastic winged gure,66 are very benecial for the attention they
have brought to further examples of the art. However, they do little to advance our apprecia-
tion for their role in the culture that produced them.

62
Arnold & Grohmann, p. 29.
63
See note 12, above.
64
In his notes to the article, Jahn provides a very detailed account of the scholarship (up to the time of publica-
tion of his contribution) on this episode in Islamic history. These sources show that knowledge of the technology
used to produce the currency had been known to specialists in the eld for some time.
65
Giorgio Della Vida, “An Arabic block print,” (‘Science on the March’ column), Scientic Monthly 59 (vi), (1944),
p. 351. Della Vida’s narrative is based on the works of Karabacek and Carter (who he calls “Carver”). Much of
the information he provides, particularly regarding the number of examples held in Vienna, is faulty. He says that
Karabacek listed only seventeen block prints in Vienna (he fails to indicate which of Karabacek’s publications he is
referring to) when the Führer gives twenty. The two examples supposedly held by the British Museum, if they ever
existed, cannot be located at present.
66
Bishr Fares, “Figures magiques, amulette: I” in Aus der Welt der islamischen Kunst: Festschrift für Ernst Kühnel zum 75.
Geburtstag am 26.10.1957, ed. Richard Ettinghausen, (Berlin, 1959), pp. 154–155 & g. 1. The inclusion of a gure,
to my knowledge, is unique to this amulet, at least thus far.
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de facilités pour battre monnaie, surtout lorsque, au milieu des
camps, il manquait de chemises et portait le pourpoint troué. Il faut
reproduire encore un trait de caractère, daté de cette époque, et qui
prophétisait la passion dominante de ce prince. Les historiens citent
cette note d'un contemporain anonyme: «Le prince de Navarre
acquiert tous les jours de nouveaux serviteurs. Il s'insinue dans les
cœurs avec une adresse incroyable. Si les hommes l'honorent et
l'estiment beaucoup, les dames ne l'aiment pas moins. Il a le visage
fort bien fait, le nez ni trop grand, ni trop petit, les yeux fort doux, le
teint brun, mais fort uni; et cela est animé d'une vivacité si peu
commune, que, s'il n'est bien avec les dames, il y aura bien du
malheur.»
Cette même année 1567 vit, en France, des essais de ligue
catholique, dont les calvinistes s'autorisèrent pour s'exciter à la lutte
et parler à la cour sur un ton plus hardi. Charles IX, dans cette
occurrence, eut un colloque très vif avec Coligny. L'amiral voulait se
mettre à la tête de la noblesse pour aller combattre le duc d'Albe,
dont la politique d'extermination inondait de sang les Pays-Bas. «—Il
n'y a pas longtemps», dit le roi à Coligny, «que vous vous contentiez
d'être soufferts par les catholiques; maintenant, vous demandez à
être égaux; bientôt vous voudrez être seuls et nous chasser du
royaume.» Les calvinistes se crurent à la veille d'être attaqués et
résolurent de prendre l'offensive. Leur prise d'armes débuta par la
tentative de Meaux contre le roi et la cour. Elle échoua, grâce à la
bravoure des gardes suisses, et les troupes de Condé et de l'amiral
ayant fait devant Paris un simulacre de siège, il s'ensuivit la bataille
de Saint-Denis, où l'action resta indécise, quoique La Noue accorde
l'avantage à l'armée royale. Le vieux connétable de Montmorency y
fut mortellement blessé. «—Votre Majesté n'a pas gagné la bataille»,
dit au roi le maréchal de Vieilleville; «encore moins le prince de
Condé.—Qui donc?» demanda Charles IX.—«Le roi d'Espagne, Sire;
car il y est mort, d'une part et d'autre, tant de valeureux seigneurs,
si grand nombre de noblesse, tant de vaillants capitaines et braves
soldats, tous de la nation française, qu'ils étaient suffisants pour
conquêter la Flandre et tous les pays sortis autrefois de votre
royaume!»
La fin de l'année 1567 et les premiers mois de l'année suivante sont
pleins d'émeutes et de prises d'armes partielles dans le midi, depuis
le Dauphiné jusque dans le Poitou. Condé et l'amiral, s'affaiblissant
autour de Paris, poussèrent leur armée vers la frontière d'Allemagne,
pour donner la main aux reîtres levés par eux dans ce pays. La
jonction se fit à Pont-à-Mousson, malgré la poursuite de l'armée
royale. Fortifiés, mais ne se jugeant pas en état de tenir la
campagne dans l'Ile-de-France, les réformés se dirigèrent sur
Orléans, prirent Blois et mirent le siège devant Chartres. Là, les
incessantes négociations de Catherine de Médicis les trouvèrent
disposés à conclure une paix que leur rendait salutaire l'indiscipline
des mercenaires allemands. Ce fut la paix de Chartres ou de
Lonjumeau. Signé au mois de mars, ce traité, aussi mal observé, de
part et d'autre, que les précédents, multiplia et envenima les griefs
réciproques: au mois d'août suivant, il n'en restait plus vestige.
En Guienne et en Gascogne, Montluc était le geôlier politique et
militaire de Jeanne d'Albret. Nous avons dit que, à raison de la
jeunesse de Henri, les fonctions de sa charge de gouverneur de
Guienne étaient exercées par le maréchal, qui ne péchait pas, envers
les «Navarrais», par excès de bienveillance. La reine jugea opportun
de réclamer pour son fils un pouvoir plus effectif, et elle en écrivit à
Charles IX, accompagnant sa requête d'une lettre de Henri, dans
laquelle il priait le roi de France de ne pas écouter «ceux qui se
voulaient fonder sur son bas âge» pour l'empêcher d'être employé
en sa charge de gouverneur de Guienne. Il y a déjà, dans cette
lettre, un accent de juste revendication et de légitime amour-propre:
«Qu'il vous plaise», dit-il au roi en parlant de sa charge purement
nominale, «de ne laisser pourtant de permettre et de me
commander que je commence d'y vaquer et entendre selon que
madite dame et mère le vous remontre et requiert. Car il me semble,
Monseigneur, pour l'honneur que j'ai d'être le premier prince de
votre sang, et sentant en moi une extrême affection au service de V.
M., ensuivant celle de mes prédécesseurs, que je tarde trop à faire
paraître ma bonne volonté...»
Cette réclamation et bien d'autres, que provoquèrent, quelques
semaines après, de la part de Jeanne, de Condé et de Coligny, les
flagrantes violations de la nouvelle paix, furent impuissantes à
prolonger celle-ci. De graves incidents en bornèrent étroitement la
durée, tels que l'attentat commis, par les ordres du parlement de
Toulouse, sur la personne de Rapin, gentilhomme du prince de
Condé. Envoyé dans cette ville pour faire enregistrer l'édit, Rapin fut
condamné à mort et sommairement exécuté. Le parlement
n'enregistra l'édit, et encore avec des restrictions, qu'après la
quatrième lettre de jussion. Nul ne se fiant à la paix de Lonjumeau,
Condé et Coligny moins que tout autre, ces deux chefs, retirés dans
leurs terres, continuèrent à entretenir d'actives correspondances
avec leurs alliés français et étrangers, jusqu'au jour où, informés que
la reine-mère avait donné des ordres pour les arrêter, eux et d'autres
personnages importants de leur parti, ils prirent la fuite et se
dirigèrent du côté de La Rochelle. Ce malheureux coup de force,
indice de tant de faiblesse, amena le chancelier de l'Hospital, le
modérateur systématique de cette époque, à faire à la cour de
sévères remontrances, auxquelles on ne put rien objecter de
raisonnable, mais qui lui attirèrent l'animadversion des conseillers du
roi et de sa mère. Se voyant à la veille d'une disgrâce, il la prévint
par sa retraite. C'était un contre-poids qui disparaissait de la scène:
dorénavant, les événements vont se précipiter.
La reine de Navarre n'avait pris aucune part à la guerre de 1567-
1568, quoiqu'elle en eût ressenti les contre-coups. Nous avons vu
qu'elle s'en était plainte au roi. Dans ses négociations à ce sujet, elle
eut à expliquer ses griefs et à défendre ses intérêts devant La
Mothe-Fénelon, chargé de lui transmettre les paroles royales et de
rapporter les siennes à la cour. Fénelon, qui devait s'illustrer, en
1587, par la belle défense de Sarlat contre Turenne, était un esprit
généreux et modéré. Il déplorait sincèrement les nouvelles
perspectives de guerre civile. «—Ce feu dévorateur,» dit-il à la reine
de Navarre, «embrasera les deux royaumes.»—«Bah! Monsieur,»
répliqua Henri avec l'impétuosité et le ton narquois qui accentuèrent
souvent ses discours, «c'est un feu à éteindre avec un seau
d'eau!»—«Eh! comment, Monseigneur?» reprit Fénelon stupéfait.
—«En faisant boire ce seau au cardinal de Lorraine, jusqu'à en
crever!» Ce prélat passait, en effet, pour être le plus impitoyable
adversaire des huguenots et le conseiller ardent des mesures de
violence.
Jeanne d'Albret, à la nouvelle de la fuite de Condé et de Coligny,
avait compris que ces mesures finiraient par l'atteindre elle-même.
Déjà Catherine lui avait fait redemander son fils, comme si elle eût
pressenti que le jeune prince aurait bientôt à jouer un rôle personnel
et prépondérant. Cette sollicitude de la reine-mère était plutôt de
nature à effrayer Jeanne qu'à la rassurer. Elle répondit à ses avances
d'une façon évasive, et conçut un dessein qui devait avoir sur la
présente crise une redoutable influence. Elle savait que les chefs
calvinistes étaient en marche vers La Rochelle; que cette ville, où
l'esprit de la Réforme était vivace, leur tendait les bras et aspirait à
devenir le boulevard du parti. Elle résolut de s'y transporter avec ses
enfants et son trésor. L'entreprise était difficile sous les yeux de
Montluc; elle semblait même téméraire, puisque, au moment où
Jeanne y songeait, de nouveaux soulèvements commençaient à
agiter ses Etats. Mais comment apaiser des troubles que Montluc
avait peut-être reçu la mission de provoquer par-dessous main ou de
favoriser, ne fût-ce que par son attitude, souvent malveillante à
l'égard de la reine? Elle n'hésita pas longtemps; mais l'exécution de
son projet exigeait la force ou la ruse. Une armée régulière, si elle
l'eût possédée, Montluc l'aurait défaite; or, elle n'avait que des
serviteurs disséminés un peu partout. Elle se confia aux uns, le plus
petit nombre, pour l'escorter et pour acheminer, plus tard, les autres
vers des lieux désignés; puis elle tendit à Montluc un vrai piège de
femme et d'héroïne.
Jeanne et ses enfants quittent le Béarn vers la fin du mois d'août
1568, emportant avec eux tout ce que la reine put réunir d'argent,
de joyaux et d'objets précieux. Arrivée à Nérac, Jeanne feint de
s'occuper des préparatifs d'une grande fête à laquelle sont invités
Montluc et sa famille. Elle endort à moitié la vigilance du rude
capitaine, et tout à coup, le 6 septembre, elle part de Nérac avec
son fils et sa fille et une escorte de cinquante gentilshommes,
laissant derrière elle toute sa cour avec des instructions précises.
Prévenu un peu tard, Montluc court après la reine, la manque de
quatre heures à Casteljaloux, la suit, la voit, impuissant, entrer dans
Bergerac, où la nouvelle lui parvient de la prise de Mazères par
Caumont La Force. Chemin faisant, l'escorte de la reine est devenue
une petite armée. Montluc et d'Escars, gouverneur de Périgord et de
Limousin, la serrent de près, mais n'osent l'attaquer. Bien plus,
Montluc, par une étrange fortune, se voit dans la nécessité de
rendre, en quelque sorte, les honneurs militaires à Jeanne et aux
royaux enfants. Il s'en tire en Gascon, et fait supplier la reine de
s'employer à contenir les protestants, jurant, de son côté, de
maintenir les catholiques dans la bonne voie. Jeanne poursuit son
voyage; elle passe à Mussidan, s'arrête quelques jours à Archiac
pour attendre le prince de Condé, qui avait dû forcer les portes de
Cognac, et enfin elle entre dans La Rochelle, le 26 septembre, suivie
de toute sa cour. Les Rochelais lui firent une réception triomphale.
Elle avait déjà écrit, de Bergerac, le 16 septembre, au roi, à la reine-
mère, au duc d'Anjou, au cardinal de Bourbon, des lettres dans
lesquelles elle expliquait les motifs de son voyage et de son attitude,
qui était manifestement celle d'une belligérante. Le ton en était
mesuré, quoique vif. A La Rochelle, exaltée par l'acte qu'elle venait
d'accomplir et aussi par l'émotion de son entourage, elle rédigea un
manifeste dont ses panégyristes eux-mêmes regrettent la forme
violente. Elle écrivit aussi à la reine Elisabeth d'Angleterre pour lui
donner des explications et lui demander son appui et ses secours.
«Ce n'est point contre le ciel et contre le Roi, comme le disent nos
ennemis, que la pointe de nos épées est tournée. Grâce à Dieu,
nous ne sommes point criminels de lèse-majesté divine ni humaine;
nous sommes fidèles à Dieu et au Roi.» Pendant ses longs démêlés
avec la cour de France, et même au plus fort de ses luttes armées
contre elle, le roi de Navarre tint constamment le même langage.
Au milieu des épanchements qui signalèrent la réception de la reine
de Navarre à La Rochelle, on remarqua la réponse du jeune prince à
la pompeuse harangue du maire, Jean de Labèze. «Je ne me suis
pas tant étudié pour parler comme vous, dit-il; je ferai mieux: je sais
beaucoup mieux faire que dire.» Le commandement de l'armée était
dû à Henri, et Condé s'empressa de le lui remettre; mais Jeanne et
son fils ne l'acceptèrent que comme un honneur, et, dans une
déclaration publique, Condé fut prié par la reine de rester à la tête
des troupes, «étant, elle et ses enfants, prêts à lui obéir en tout et
partout». On sut gré, de toutes parts, au fils et à la mère, de ce
désistement prudent et politique. Un incident caractéristique donna
la mesure de la supériorité d'esprit et de l'influence de la reine de
Navarre. Condé la supplia d'accepter le gouvernement civil de
l'armée, tandis qu'il en assumerait le gouvernement militaire. Elle
accepta cette mission bien difficile pour une femme, et y déploya ses
rares qualités d'ordre, de prévoyance et de résolution. Le jeune
prince de Condé devint le compagnon d'armes de Henri, que Jeanne
voulut elle-même revêtir de sa première armure, à Tonnay-Charente,
au milieu d'une cérémonie militaire. «Toute l'Europe a les yeux fixés
sur vous, lui dit-elle: vous cessez d'être enfant. Allez, en obéissant,
apprendre, sous Condé, à commander un jour.» A la veille des
combats et des périls qu'on prévoyait, aucun signe de faiblesse: «Le
contentement de soutenir une si belle cause, dit-elle plus tard,
surmontait en moi le sexe, en lui l'âge.»
Henri eût bien voulu se jeter sans délai dans cette nouvelle
existence. Fatigué de l'inaction qui lui était imposée pendant que se
faisaient les préparatifs de guerre, il cherchait partout le
mouvement. Il faillit trouver la mort dans une promenade en mer, où
il eût péri sans la vigueur d'un marin de La Rochelle, qui le ramena
au rivage. L'armée protestante, renforcée à chaque instant, bien
armée et approvisionnée, grâce aux sacrifices de Jeanne d'Albret et
aux secours de toute espèce qu'elle avait obtenus d'Elisabeth,
devenait de jour en jour plus puissante. Ce n'était plus, à vrai dire,
une armée, c'en était trois, sans compter les enfants perdus et les
bandes de toute sorte. Il y avait, d'abord, la grande armée de Condé
et de Coligny, puis un corps nombreux, commandé par Dandelot,
frère de l'amiral, et enfin quinze ou vingt mille religionnaires, levés
par Jacques de Crussol, comte d'Acier, en Dauphiné, en Provence et
en Languedoc.
La cour, inquiète de cette affluence sous les drapeaux de la Réforme,
s'avisa d'écrire aux gouverneurs et lieutenants-généraux que le roi
n'entendait pas faire une guerre systématique aux réformés. A rester
chez eux, ils ne risquaient rien, ils étaient sous la protection du Roi.
Il y eut quelques défections, mais de peu d'importance, et ce fut
alors qu'on recourut aux mesures de rigueur. L'édit de Saint-Maur
défend, sous peine de mort, l'exercice de la religion réformée,
ordonne à tous les ministres de sortir du royaume dans un délai de
quinze jours, et aux magistrats de n'épargner que ceux des
dissidents qui abjureraient l'hérésie. Un autre édit, qui suit, prononce
la confiscation des biens des réformés, et enfin, par lettres-patentes,
Charles IX, sous prétexte que Jeanne et ses enfants sont prisonniers
des rebelles, ordonne au baron de Luxe de s'emparer du Béarn. Les
réformés, par la voix de Jeanne et de leurs chefs, publièrent des
protestations et des apologies, sans se faire illusion sur l'efficacité de
ces démonstrations. La parole était à l'épée.
L'armée de Saintonge avait des chefs entreprenants, qui la mirent
bientôt en campagne. La cour n'était pas prête à soutenir la grande
guerre qu'elle prévoyait. Le duc de Montpensier, chargé d'arrêter les
religionnaires commandés par Crussol, les avait battus, le 14 octobre
1568, à Mensignac, près de Périgueux, mais sans pouvoir les
empêcher de rejoindre le prince de Condé. En moins de trois
semaines, le généralissime calviniste comptait autour de lui dix-huit
mille arquebusiers et trois mille chevaux. Une seconde armée royale
se formait, dont le duc d'Anjou, frère du roi, devait prendre le
commandement. Avant qu'elle fût en marche, les huguenots avaient
pris Niort, Meslay, Fontenay, Saint-Maixent et nombre de petites
places dans le Poitou. Angoulême, réputée imprenable, repoussa
victorieusement un assaut de Montgomery, mais fut forcée de se
rendre au prince de Condé, menant avec lui son neveu, le prince de
Navarre: ce fut le premier siège auquel assista Henri de Bourbon.
Dans la Saintonge, les armées protestantes faisaient tout plier:
reddition de Saint-Jean-d'Angély, reddition de Saintes, prise de Pons.
Quand l'armée du duc d'Anjou se mit en mouvement vers la fin du
mois d'octobre, le duc de Montpensier pouvait à peine tenir la
campagne du côté de Châtellerault, et de toutes les grandes places
du Poitou, il ne restait au roi que Poitiers, où commandait le
maréchal de Vieilleville.

CHAPITRE VI
L'armée du duc d'Anjou.—Temporisation.—Escarmouche de Loudun.—Les
renforts attendus.—Bataille de Bassac ou de Jarnac.—Mort du prince de
Condé.—Son éloge par La Noue.—Jeanne d'Albret à Tonnay-Charente.—
Henri proclamé généralissime.—Affaires de Béarn.—Arrivée des reîtres
en Limousin.—La campagne de Montgomery en Gascogne et en Béarn.
—Combat de La Roche-Abeille.—Siège de Poitiers, désapprouvé par le
prince de Navarre.—Tactique du duc d'Anjou.—Combat de Saint-Clair.—
Mesures de proscription contre Coligny.—L'avis avant la bataille.—
Bataille de Moncontour.—L'inaction de Henri et la grande faute de
l'amiral.—Héroïsme de Jeanne d'Albret.

L'armée royale comptait plus de vingt mille hommes, tant Français

que Suisses, Allemands et reîtres. Le duc d'Anjou, ayant sous ses
ordres Tavannes et Sansac, recueillit les troupes de Montpensier et
fut bientôt en présence de l'ennemi. Mais, soit qu'il y eût, de part et
d'autre, comme un parti pris de temporisation, soit que le duc
d'Anjou voulût attendre des renforts qui, en effet, vinrent, plus tard,
grossir son armée, l'automne de 1568 se passa en manœuvres et en
escarmouches. Dans une de ces rencontres, près de Loudun, Henri
eut l'occasion de prouver qu'il avait acquis déjà le sens militaire. Les
réformés étaient en force: le prince de Navarre s'étonna qu'on ne
marchât point résolûment à l'ennemi. «—Si le duc d'Anjou, dit-il, se
croyait assez fort, il ne manquerait pas de nous attaquer. Marchons
donc sans délai: la victoire est certaine.» Elle était, du moins,
probable, et les deux chefs principaux, Condé et Coligny, auraient pu
suivre un plus mauvais conseil. Les rigueurs de l'hiver interrompirent
les opérations. Les catholiques s'établirent dans le Poitou
septentrional et le Limousin; les calvinistes, dans le Bas-Poitou,
l'Angoumois et la Saintonge. La reine de Navarre et son fils
passèrent le reste de l'hiver à Niort, d'où partirent les ordres et les
messages en vue de la rentrée en campagne. Les deux armées
nourrissaient également l'espoir d'être renforcées en temps
opportun: les catholiques pressaient l'arrivée de nouvelles troupes,
qui ne leur firent pas défaut, et les protestants attendaient avec
impatience des renforts du Quercy, qui ne vinrent pas, et les
auxiliaires allemands en marche sous les ordres du duc de Deux-
Ponts. Ceux-ci arrivèrent trop tard.
Le duc d'Anjou, instruit du demi-désarroi de l'armée calviniste, prit
l'offensive, dès les premiers jours du mois de mars 1569. Le 13, par
une marche rapide, il arrive dans le voisinage de l'ennemi, qui
occupait Cognac, Jarnac et les ponts de la Charente. Le duc jette un
pont, pendant la nuit, près de l'abbaye de Bassac, non loin du logis
de l'amiral. Coligny, surpris, veut se retirer; le désordre se met dans
ses troupes, elles combattent en fuyant; l'arrière-garde est
enveloppée; La Noue tombe au pouvoir de l'armée royale, et le
prince de Condé, en chargeant les reîtres, la jambe cassée d'un coup
de pied de cheval, est tué par Montesquiou, capitaine des gardes du
duc d'Anjou, au moment où il venait de rendre son épée à deux
gentilshommes catholiques.
Sans la mort de ce chef intrépide, la défaite de Jarnac n'eût été
qu'un simple échec pour les protestants: leur infanterie était intacte,
et elle se mit, en grande partie, à l'abri derrière les hautes murailles
de Cognac. Mais en perdant Condé, les calvinistes perdaient plus
qu'une armée: outre le courage et l'esprit de décision, il avait mis au
service de la cause un vrai talent de généralissime, que rehaussait
encore sa qualité de prince du sang. «En hardiesse, dit François de
La Noue dans ses Mémoires, aucun de son siècle ne l'a surpassé, ni
en courtoisie. Il parlait fort disertement, plus de nature que d'art,
était libéral et très affable à toutes personnes; et avec cela excellent
chef de guerre, néanmoins amateur de paix. Il se portait encore
mieux en adversité qu'en prospérité.» Condé laissait un vide où
menaçaient de s'engloutir les espérances du parti, malgré les
mérites reconnus de l'amiral. Jeanne d'Albret et son fils firent bientôt
oublier ce moment de défaillance.
A la nouvelle de la défaite de Jarnac, la reine de Navarre quitte La
Rochelle. Comme elle avait «un grand cœur et un esprit mâle», dit
de Thou, elle ne s'arrêta point à déplorer ce malheur. Elle court à
Tonnay-Charente, où s'était rassemblée une partie de l'armée
rompue. Elle parle en reine affligée, mais en héroïne indomptable;
elle offre sa vie, celle de son fils; elle provoque le serment des
résistances suprêmes. De longues acclamations accueillent ses
paroles. Henri parle à son tour: «—Votre cause est la mienne; vos
intérêts sont les miens. Je jure, sur mon âme, honneur et vie, d'être
à jamais tout à vous.» Le fils de Condé s'associe à ce serment, que
les chefs et l'armée prêtent à leur tour. Henri sera généralissime avec
Condé pour lieutenant et Coligny pour lieutenant-général. Jeanne
réunit les chefs. L'argent manque: elle donne tout ce qu'elle a; on
l'imite; les pierreries, les bijoux seront mis en gage en Angleterre.
Mais cela sauvegarde seulement le présent, il faut songer à l'avenir:
on battra monnaie par la vente des biens ecclésiastiques dans les
provinces conquises. C'est la guerre à outrance. Pauvre pays! que
d'épreuves lui sont réservées! On aime à voir, du moins, le prince de
Navarre, à peine revêtu d'un titre officiel à l'armée, s'occuper de
venir en aide à quelques victimes de la guerre. Le 18 mars, il écrit
au duc d'Anjou pour recommander à sa bienveillance les prisonniers
calvinistes et lui offrir ses bons offices pour les prisonniers
catholiques. «Nous avons en nos mains quelques prisonniers des
vôtres, comme aussi vous en avez bien des nôtres; s'il vous plaît
trouver bon de les mettre à rançon ou d'en faire échange, nous y
entendrons volontiers, et vous plaira m'en mander votre volonté.»
Pendant que les calvinistes se relevaient en Saintonge, ils étaient
écrasés dans la Navarre, surtout en Béarn. Antoine de Lomagne-
Terrides, à la tête des catholiques, et avec l'agrément de Charles IX,
avait conquis rapidement le pays. Il n'eut bientôt plus devant lui
d'autre obstacle que Navarrenx, qui résista héroïquement. Pour
recouvrer le Béarn, Jeanne comptait sur l'armée des quatre
vicomtes, Gourdon, Paulin, Montclar et Bruniquel, qui opérait dans le
Quercy et le Haut-Languedoc, et sur l'appui des auxiliaires
allemands, que Coligny attendait aussi pour prendre l'offensive.
Ceux-ci arrivèrent enfin. Après avoir traversé la France, presque sans
coup férir, grâce à la mésintelligence des deux armées chargées de
les arrêter, l'une commandée par Montpensier, l'autre par le duc
d'Aumale, les reîtres passèrent la Loire à la Charité, et Coligny
marcha à leur rencontre; mais leur chef, le duc de Deux-Ponts,
mourut, le 11 juin, à Nexon, petite ville à trois lieues de Limoges.
Jeanne d'Albret se rendit à Chalus, au-devant des renforts
allemands, dont le comte de Mansfeld avait pris le commandement.
Elle distribua aux principaux chefs, en signe d'alliance, des médailles
d'or, frappées à La Rochelle, suspendues à des chaînes de même
métal. On voyait, d'un côté, son portrait et celui du prince de
Navarre; de l'autre, cette inscription: Pax certa, victoria integra,
mors honesta. Elle venait de recevoir d'Elisabeth les secours
accordés sur la garantie de ses joyaux, et elle en avait fait passer
sur-le-champ une partie à l'armée des vicomtes, avec ordre de se
tenir prêts à entrer dans le Béarn; mais ces chefs n'étant pas
suffisamment d'accord, elle fit appel au comte de Montgomery, le
meurtrier involontaire de Henri II. Après avoir conféré avec la reine
et ses conseillers habituels, il accepta la périlleuse mission qui lui
était offerte, et se mit presque seul en route pour cette campagne à
travers le royaume de Navarre, merveilleuse de vigueur et de
rapidité, mais odieuse par les excès auxquels se livrèrent les troupes
calvinistes. Navarrenx est délivré; Orthez, emporté d'assaut, est
saccagé et noyé dans son sang. Le 23 août 1569, Montgomery fait
son entrée à Pau, où il se déshonore et marque d'avance d'une
tache de sang la mémoire de Jeanne d'Albret, en faisant massacrer,
le lendemain, les chefs catholiques, que la capitulation du château
d'Orthez mettait formellement à l'abri de tout acte de rigueur.
A peine Jeanne d'Albret avait-elle sujet de se féliciter des succès de
Montgomery, que le désastre de Moncontour vint menacer d'une
ruine absolue et sa couronne et le parti calviniste tout entier.
Quoique l'armée royale, qui avait beaucoup souffert, et que la reine-
mère était venue encourager par sa présence, se fût grossie de
quelques corps allemands, italiens et espagnols, les conseillers du
duc d'Anjou le dissuadèrent longtemps de chercher la bataille: ses
trente mille hommes de diverses nationalités ne semblaient pas de
force à venir aisément à bout des vingt-cinq mille hommes de
Coligny, pliés à une sévère discipline par cet habile capitaine. Les
deux partis s'observèrent longtemps dans le Limousin. Enfin, les
huguenots, plus portés que leurs adversaires à en venir aux mains,
engagèrent, le 23 juin, à La Roche-Abeille, près de Saint-Yrieix, une
affaire d'avant-garde qui tourna à leur avantage: plus de quatre
cents catholiques restèrent sur le terrain. La présence du prince de
Navarre à cette sanglante escarmouche ne put empêcher les
calvinistes, irrités des nouvelles du massacre de quelques chefs
béarnais par les troupes de Terrides, de faire main basse sur la
plupart des prisonniers. Ce fut, dit-on, à la suite de cette affaire que
des catholiques firent tracer les vers suivants au bas d'un de ses
portraits:
 Dessille un peu les yeux, sang illustre de France;
Prince brave et vaillant, reconnais ton erreur.
Qui ne fault qu'une fois excuse son offense,
Qui persévère au mal se plaît en son malheur.

Une chose plus authentique que ce quatrain, c'est la lettre adressée,

le 12 juillet, au duc d'Anjou, par le prince de Navarre, et dont voici
un passage caractéristique: «Je ne puis bonnement penser avec
quelle apparence de vérité on vous peut faire croire que nous
veuillions ruiner et renverser cet Etat!... Cela se pourrait beaucoup
mieux adresser à ceux qui ont tant de fois, avec si justes occasions,
été notés et remarqués d'affecter cet Etat et jusqu'à faire faire une
recherche de leur généalogie, par le moyen de laquelle ils ont bien
osé mettre en avant que cette couronne avait été usurpée sur leurs
prédécesseurs par nos ancêtres... Ce sont ceux-là qui désirent et
pourchassent la subversion et ruine de ce royaume... Ce sont ceux-là
qu'il faut craindre qu'ils veuillent introduire une autre puissance et
autorité en ce royaume qui y est maintenant et que Dieu y a
légitimement établie, et qui ont des communications et intelligences
si étroites avec les étrangers, ennemis naturels et conjurés de cet
Etat...»
Coligny, poursuivant ses succès, s'empara de Lusignan et de
Châtellerault, et commit la grave faute d'aller mettre le siège devant
Poitiers, dont la possession, au dire des gentilshommes du pays, lui
était indispensable pour donner de la consistance à ses opérations.
Henri fut, sur ce point, en désaccord avec l'amiral. Il représenta,
dans le conseil, qu'à peine arrivée devant Poitiers, fortement
défendu, l'armée calviniste pourrait avoir l'armée royale sur les bras;
que le succès était douteux, et que, ne le fût-il pas, il ne saurait être
acheté que par le sacrifice de beaucoup d'hommes et une perte de
temps considérable. L'amiral, s'entêtant, perdit trois mille hommes
en deux mois devant Poitiers. L'investissement de Châtellerault par
l'armée royale, venant faire diversion, sauva les réformés du ridicule:
ils levèrent le siège et se dirigèrent sur Châtellerault; mais le duc
d'Anjou ne les attendit pas. Il manœuvrait de façon à profiter de la
faute de Poitiers, cause d'affaiblissement et même de
découragement pour les calvinistes. Le 30 septembre, saisissant une
occasion favorable de prendre l'offensive, il offrit inopinément la
bataille à Coligny, dont il culbuta l'arrière-garde à Saint-Clair, près de
Moncontour. L'amiral aurait pu temporiser: il ne voulut pas s'y
résoudre, de peur que sa retraite, après un échec, ne fût
interprétée, par ses troupes elles-mêmes, comme le signe d'une
irrémédiable faiblesse. Il se prépara de son mieux à la lutte; mais il
avait devant lui, outre une armée supérieure en nombre et pleine de
confiance dans le succès, des chefs tels que Montpensier et
Tavannes, dont la bravoure éclairée n'abandonnait rien au hasard.
Peut-être l'amiral, en prenant la résolution de combattre, céda-t-il à
quelque passion personnelle, au ressentiment légitime des mesures
de proscription que la cour venait d'ordonner contre lui. «Après la
levée du siège de Poitiers, dit Castelnau, le parlement de Paris, à la
requête du Procureur général Bourdin, donna arrêt de mort contre
l'amiral, le comte de Montgomery et le vidame de Chartres, comme
rebelles, atteints et convaincus du crime de lèse-majesté, et le
même jour furent mis en effigie (exécutés). L'arrêt aussi portait
promesse de cinquante mille écus à celui qui livrerait l'amiral au roi
et à la justice, soit étranger ou son domestique, avec abolition du
crime par lui commis, s'il était adhérent ou complice de sa
rébellion...» Plus tard, un autre arrêt, interprétatif du premier, portait
que l'amiral pourrait être livré «mort ou vif.» «Arrêts, conclut
Castelnau, que quelques politiques estimaient être donnés à contre-
temps et qui servaient plutôt d'allumettes pour augmenter le feu des
guerres civiles que pour l'éteindre, étant leur parti trop fort pour
donner de la terreur, par de l'encre et de la peinture, à ceux qui n'en
prenaient point devant des armées de trente mille hommes et aux
plus furieuses charges des combats...» A ces rigueurs barbares il
avait été question d'en ajouter d'autres de même nature contre
Jeanne d'Albret, le prince de Navarre et le prince de Condé; mais
Charles IX, tout en ordonnant de saisir leurs Etats et leurs domaines,
ne voulut pas que les procédures dirigées contre la Maison de
Châtillon s'étendissent à leurs personnes.
Coligny n'affronta la dangereuse partie qui lui était offerte que
quarante-huit heures après l'escarmouche de Saint-Clair. La veille de
ce grand jour, un avertissement, qui aurait pu être salutaire, lui fut
donné dans des circonstances que La Noue raconte en ces termes:
«Il advint que deux gentilshommes du côté des catholiques étant
écartés, vinrent à parler à aucuns de la religion, y ayant quelque
fossé entre deux: «—Messieurs, leur dirent-ils, nous portons marque
d'ennemis, mais nous ne vous haïssons nullement, ni votre parti.
Avertissez monsieur l'amiral qu'il se donne bien garde de combattre,
car notre armée est merveilleusement puissante, pour les renforts
qui y sont survenus, et est avec cela bien délibérée; mais qu'il
temporise un mois seulement, car toute la noblesse a juré et dit à
Monseigneur (le duc d'Anjou) qu'elle ne demourera davantage... S'ils
n'ont promptement victoire, ils seront contraints de venir à la paix,
et la vous donneront avantageuse. Dites-lui que nous savons ceci de
bon lieu et désirions grandement l'en avertir.» D'autres Mémoires,
qui n'ont pu s'inspirer de ceux de La Noue, rapportent le même fait
avec des variantes de peu d'importance: il n'est donc pas douteux.
L'amiral ne voulut pas tenir compte de cet avis, ou peut-être n'en
eut-il pas le temps, sous le coup de quelques menaces de mutinerie
des reîtres.
Le 3 octobre, dans l'après-midi, la bataille commença. Quarante-cinq
ou cinquante mille hommes, parmi lesquels les Français étaient
presque en minorité, se heurtèrent pendant une heure dans la plaine
de Moncontour. Tous les corps furent engagés de part et d'autre et
luttèrent avec un acharnement où se marquait un surcroît
d'animosité. Dès le commencement de l'action, l'amiral fut
grièvement blessé au visage par le Rhingrave, au service de la
France depuis les dernières années du règne de Charles-Quint. Il y
eut entre eux comme un combat singulier, dans lequel l'amiral tua
son adversaire. Beaucoup de vaillants officiers de l'un et de l'autre
parti périrent dans cette rencontre ou furent faits prisonniers; le duc
d'Anjou eut un cheval tué sous lui. Parmi les prisonniers se trouva La
Noue, qui dut la vie au frère du roi, empressé d'ailleurs, disent tous
les historiens, à arrêter le massacre des calvinistes français. Leurs
auxiliaires allemands furent écrasés. Quand l'armée de Coligny eut
plié sous les dernières charges des catholiques, la cavalerie, un
instant dispersée, parvint à se rallier et à se retirer en bon ordre;
mais l'infanterie, rompue, traversée, cernée de tous côtés, en pleine
débandade, fut à moitié anéantie; trois ou quatre mille reîtres
restèrent sur la place. On n'évalue pas à moins de six mille morts la
perte des calvinistes, tandis que les catholiques n'en laissèrent pas
plus de cinq cents sur le champ de bataille. Le soir, on présenta cent
quarante enseignes protestantes au duc d'Anjou.
Un mauvais génie semblait dicter à l'amiral ses résolutions. Avant
l'action, incertain du succès, il prit des mesures pour soustraire aux
chances funestes du combat le prince de Navarre et le prince de
Condé. Ils furent tenus à l'écart, sous la garde du comte de Nassau
et d'un fort détachement, et virent cependant le commencement de
la bataille. A ce moment, Coligny venait de renverser l'avant-garde
du duc d'Anjou. Henri, frémissant d'impatience et voyant la trouée
faite par l'amiral: «—Donnons, donnons, mes amis, s'écria-t-il: voilà
le point de la victoire!» Ce qui était vrai, dit un contemporain; car «si
le comte eût fait une charge avec sa cavalerie, il eût
merveilleusement ébranlé l'armée de Monseigneur et certainement
déterminé la victoire». Les jeunes princes, forcés d'obéir au général
en chef, tournèrent le dos à la bataille avant d'en connaître l'issue, et
devancèrent l'amiral à Parthenay, où se rassemblèrent péniblement
les débris de l'armée des calvinistes. Jeanne d'Albret, incapable de
s'abandonner au désespoir, accourt au milieu des vaincus, relève leur
courage, leur promet de meilleurs jours et leur fait, encore une fois,
le sacrifice de sa fortune et de son fils. «Une femme qui n'avait de la
femme que le nom et le visage», ont dit Quinte-Curce et d'Aubigné.

CHAPITRE VII
 Les lenteurs du duc d'Anjou.—Les desseins des réformés.—Siège de Saint-
Jean-d'Angély.—Commencement de la grande retraite de Coligny.—Le
passage de la Dordogne.—Le pont et le moulin du Port-Sainte-Marie.—
Jonction avec l'armée de Montgomery.—L'armée des princes en
Languedoc.—«Justice de Rapin.»—Négociations pour la paix.—La
«pelote de neige».—Passage du Rhône.—Arrivée à Saint-Etienne.—
Maladie de l'amiral.—Combat d'Arnay-le-Duc.—Première victoire de
Henri.—Ce qu'il apprit dans la retraite de Coligny.—Les affaires en
Saintonge et en Poitou.—Bataille de Sainte-Gemme.—La Noue Bras-de-
fer.—Montluc à Rabastens.—Coligny à La Charité.—La trêve.—Paix de
Saint-Germain.

Si, après le désastre de Moncontour, le duc d'Anjou eût toujours

marché droit à l'ennemi, c'en était fait peut-être de l'organisation
militaire du calvinisme en France. Il en fut tout autrement. Le duc se
laissa mener, par ses conseillers, de siège en siège, à Parthenay,
abandonné, à Niort, qui ne résista pas, à Châtellerault, à Lusignan,
dont les garnisons s'acheminaient vers la Saintonge et le Berry,
pendant que, conformément aux résolutions prises à Parthenay par
les calvinistes, leurs divers corps opéraient un mouvement de
concentration à travers le Bas-Poitou et l'Angoumois, tirant vers les
frontières de Guienne. On donnait à Coligny non seulement le temps
d'agir, mais encore celui de réfléchir mûrement. Il fut arrêté, dans
son conseil, que les réformés laisseraient de fortes garnisons à La
Rochelle, à Angoulême et à Saint-Jean-d'Angély; que ce qui restait
de «l'armée des princes», comme on appelait celle de Coligny,
depuis la mort de Condé, battrait en retraite dans le midi, pour y
prendre ses quartiers d'hiver, après avoir fait sa jonction avec
l'armée de Montgomery; que Jeanne d'Albret s'enfermerait dans La
Rochelle avec La Noue et La Rochefoucauld, chargés d'organiser la
défense ou l'attaque, selon les cas; et, enfin, que le prince de
Navarre et le prince de Condé marcheraient aux côtés de l'amiral,
pour s'instruire à son école et montrer au pays que les princes du
sang, quelle que fût la fortune, étaient toujours les chefs du parti
calviniste.
L'exécution de ces desseins fut singulièrement facilitée par le temps
que perdit le duc d'Anjou à faire le siège de Saint-Jean-d'Angély.
«Comme l'assiégement de Poitiers, dit La Noue, fut le
commencement du malheur des huguenots, aussi fut celui de Saint-
Jean-d'Angély l'arrêt de la bonne fortune des catholiques.» Piles,
gouverneur de cette place et un des plus vaillants capitaines
calvinistes, arrêta, pendant près de deux mois, l'armée royale sous
ses murs, malgré la présence de Charles IX, qui, jaloux des succès
de son frère, avait voulu jouer au généralissime, ce qu'il fit, du reste,
avec ardeur et bravoure. Saint-Jean-d'Angély se rendit, au mois de
décembre, au moment où l'amiral, toutes choses réglées au mieux,
commençait avec une armée disloquée, sans bagages et sans
argent, la retraite la plus extraordinaire sur le sol français dont nos
annales aient gardé le souvenir. «En neuf mois,» selon la remarque
de La Noue, «l'armée de messieurs les princes fit près de trois cents
lieues, tournoyant quasi le royaume de France.»
Jusque sur les bords de la Dordogne, l'armée n'eut guère à souffrir
que du mauvais temps et des privations. Le passage de la rivière
était une question capitale. Il s'effectua sans encombre, grâce à la
prévoyance et à la vigueur de deux capitaines, La Loue et Chouppes.
La Dordogne franchie, l'armée des princes remonte le cours de la
Garonne sans être inquiétée, prend Aiguillon et diverses petites
places, et s'ingénie à construire un pont de bateaux au Port-Sainte-
Marie, pour favoriser sa jonction avec l'armée de Montgomery, qui,
après sa foudroyante campagne d'Armagnac et de Béarn, hivernait à
Condom. «Le pont, qui avait attendu le comte plus de quinze jours,
dit d'Aubigné, fut rompu par quelque moulin qu'on laissa dériver la
nuit; l'eau étant grande, les pièces en furent emportées jusques à
Saint-Macaire; et ainsi il fallut que les troupes de Béarn passassent
dans des bateaux, non sans grande longueur et incommodité. A ce
terme, acheva l'année (1569).» Montluc se vante, dans ses
Commentaires, d'avoir imaginé ce bélier flottant, bien digne, en
effet, de son esprit inventif.
L'armée séjourna tout un mois à Montauban, côtoya le Tarn, le
franchit et s'empara d'un fort, près de Toulouse, où l'amiral s'établit,
comme un oiseau de proie dans son aire. Toulouse était à l'abri de
ses entreprises, mais la campagne fut ravagée; on brûla presque
toutes les maisons de plaisance, surtout celles des «justiciers». On
vengeait, de la sorte, le meurtre judiciaire de Rapin. «Justice de
Rapin!» lisait-on sur toutes les ruines que l'armée semait sur son
passage. Après avoir vécu dans ces contrées, à la façon d'Annibal,
les réformés, laissant de côté Carcassonne, qui avait brûlé ses
faubourgs pour donner moins de prise à l'ennemi, entrent, sans coup
férir, à Montréal. Là, ils sont rejoints par des négociateurs chargés de
proposer la paix. On dispute avec courtoisie sur l'objet du message,
mais on ne peut s'entendre sur la question de la liberté du culte, et
de belles paroles sont envoyées au roi, en échange des siennes. Puis
la marche en avant est reprise, l'armée se dirige du côté de
Narbonne, tirant vers Montpellier. A Montpellier, Coligny se renforce
de douze cents hommes commandés par Baudiné. On marche
toujours: de petits sièges, chaque semaine; des escarmouches,
chaque jour; quelquefois, des échecs; le plus souvent des succès;
mais, en somme, des accroissements: la «pelote de neige» est déjà
«devenue grosse comme une maison», au jugement de La Noue.
Coligny possède une véritable armée, à l'artillerie près. A Aubenas,
on trouve deux canons: cela suffit pour décider que l'armée des
princes passera le Rhône. Et, en effet, on le passe, après une
épopée de petits combats, de stratagèmes, de chances et de
mésaventures que d'Aubigné, dans son style de bataille, décrit en
moins de mots qu'il n'y eut d'affaires.
L'armée a parcouru deux cents lieues de pays, trois cents et plus, si
l'on compte les circuits de rigueur; elle traverse les montagnes du
Forez, comme elle avait escaladé quelques contreforts des
Cévennes, et elle arrive à Saint-Étienne. Là, tout parut à la veille
d'être perdu: l'amiral fut à la mort. Debout encore une fois, cet
homme de fer retrouve toute son énergie. Beaucoup de soldats l'ont
quitté: il ramasse quelques détachements qui viennent de parcourir
une partie de la Bourgogne, et ordonne la marche vers la Loire. C'est
alors que la cour, voyant les réformés près d'entrer au cœur de la
France, songe, mais un peu tard, à leur opposer une armée. Le
maréchal de Cossé la réunit en toute hâte: dix-sept mille hommes,
parmi lesquels quatre mille Suisses, douze cents reîtres et six cents
Italiens, forment une barrière vivante à Arnay-le-Duc, à cinq lieues
d'Autun; il faut la tourner ou la renverser. L'amiral, qui se défiait
d'une action générale, parvint à gagner le passage qu'il convoitait,
après une escarmouche brillante, où les princes firent leurs
premières armes. L'armée calviniste se présenta sur six lignes:
Ludovic de Nassau commandait la première, sous le prince de
Navarre; le marquis de Resnel, la deuxième, sous Condé; Coligny
menait la troisième; Montgomery, Genlis, François de Briquemaut
avaient charge des trois autres; le comte de Mansfeld commandait la
cavalerie allemande. Il n'y eut point de mêlée générale, mais une
série de combats meurtriers, où le prince de Navarre fit bravement
son devoir, comme il aimait à le rappeler lui-même. «Je n'avais
retraite, racontait-il, qu'à plus de quarante lieues de là, et je
demeurais à la discrétion des paysans. En combattant, aussi je
courais risque d'être pris ou tué, parce que je n'avais point de canon
et les gens du roi en avaient. A dix pas de moi, fut tué un cavalier
d'un coup de coulevrine; mais, recommandant à Dieu le succès de
cette journée, il la rendit heureuse et favorable.»
A la suite de ces combats, l'armée du maréchal, troublée plutôt que
défaite, laissa l'amiral s'acheminer vers la Charité, où il arriva avec
des troupes fatiguées, mais encore en état de soutenir la lutte.
Si cette campagne de Coligny n'eût pas été un épisode de guerre
civile, la France l'aurait inscrite avec orgueil au rang de ses glorieux
exploits militaires. Elle fut une mémorable leçon pour le prince de
Navarre. Vivre au jour le jour, sans cesse sur le qui-vive, souffrir et
voir souffrir, manquer de tout, résister à tout, garder partout le sang-
froid et la bonne humeur: voilà ce qu'il apprit, et de façon à ne
l'oublier jamais. Pendant cette marche terrible, il suivit d'héroïques
exemples et sut en donner à son tour. Mêlé à tous les accidents de
cette existence nomade, il encourageait les faibles et doublait
l'énergie des forts. Parfois on le vit, au milieu des troupes, portant
en croupe un soldat blessé ou malade. Il préludait ainsi à sa mission
de «vainqueur» et de «père».
Pendant que l'armée des princes poursuivait son odyssée, la guerre
avait continué en Saintonge et en Poitou. Avant de quitter Saint-
Jean-d'Angély, Catherine de Médicis, inquiète de l'étrange campagne
entreprise par Coligny, avait essayé de conclure la paix avec Jeanne
d'Albret, à qui elle envoya Castelnau, un des habiles négociateurs de
cette époque. La reine de Navarre ne s'humilia point: elle voulait la
paix, sans doute, mais une paix dont son parti n'eût pas à souffrir, et
qui lui offrît de fortes garanties. Castelnau ne put la gagner, et les
négociations tentées à l'armée des princes, pendant sa course à
travers les provinces du midi, étaient restées pendantes. Au
printemps de 1570, il y eut une reprise des hostilités. Un coup de
main des catholiques sur La Rochelle échoua. Soubise et La
Rochefoucauld s'emparèrent de Saintes, après une vive résistance.
La Noue prit Marans et les Sables-d'Olonne, plusieurs autres villes,
châteaux ou bicoques; il regagna la plupart des places perdues
jusqu'à Niort. Déjà haut placé dans l'estime des gens de guerre, il se
révéla grand capitaine par ses nombreux succès, mais surtout par la
victoire de Sainte-Gemme, en Poitou, remportée, le 15 juin 1570, sur
Puygaillard, avec des forces médiocres. Cette journée coûta aux
catholiques seize drapeaux, deux étendards, les cornettes blanches
de France, trois mille hommes de pied et deux cent cinquante
chevaux. A la fin du mois de juin, La Noue assiégeait Fontenay-le-
Comte, qui se rendit, lorsqu'il eut le bras emporté d'une
mousquetade. Transporté à La Rochelle, il avait le choix entre
l'amputation et la mort, et préférait celle-ci; mais Jeanne d'Albret
obtint de lui qu'il subît l'opération. Quelques jours après, La Noue
remontait à cheval, avec ce bras de fer auquel il doit son glorieux
surnom[12].
[12]
Appendice: VII.

Vers le même temps, par un retour offensif dans les États de Jeanne
d'Albret, Montluc essaya de contrebalancer les succès des
huguenots, et il eût fait, sans doute, une sanglante besogne dans
ces pays, si l'on en juge par le siège et la destruction de Rabastens;
mais la blessure qu'il y reçut, le 23 juillet, vint paralyser les
mouvements de son armée. On touchait, du reste, à une suspension
des hostilités. Coligny, toujours suivi des négociateurs de Catherine
de Médicis, avait signé, à La Charité, une trêve qui amena la paix de
Saint-Germain, dite la «paix du roi Charles», conclue le 8 août. Ce
traité reproduit plusieurs articles des traités précédents, mais, dans
l'ensemble, il est comme l'ébauche du célèbre édit de Nantes.
Le roi accorde aux «confédérés» une amnistie entière, la liberté de
conscience, le libre exercice du culte dissident par toute la France,
excepté dans Paris et à la cour; un cimetière protestant dans toutes
les villes; l'admission, sans distinction de culte, des pauvres et des
malades dans les écoles et dans les hôpitaux.
Il ordonne à tous ses sujets de vivre en bonne intelligence; rétablit
l'exercice de la religion catholique dans toutes les parties du
royaume; déclare qu'il regarde la reine de Navarre, les princes de
Navarre et de Condé, comme ses bons et fidèles parents, et comme
amis tous ceux qui ont suivi leur parti, même les princes étrangers.
Il approuve et ratifie tout ce qui a été fait, pendant la guerre, par les
ordres des chefs confédérés, même la levée des deniers du roi,
ordonnée par Jeanne, et défend toute recherche à ce sujet;
reconnaît que les protestants, supportant les charges de l'Etat, en
doivent partager les honneurs et les dignités; entend qu'on rende les
biens et les meubles enlevés aux protestants; à certaines villes, le
droit en vertu duquel elles étaient exemptes de garnisons; au prince
d'Orange et à ses frères, les riches possessions acquises en France,
depuis les traités conclus entre François Ier et la Maison de Nassau;
à la reine de Navarre, toutes ses terres, villes et places fortes.
Charles IX ordonne que la justice soit égale pour tous; que les
jugements, même criminels, rendus pendant les troubles, soient
révoqués, annulés; que les protestants soient tenus d'observer
toutes les lois et coutumes de l'Etat. Toutefois, comme le parlement
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